display

Heavy snowfalls again caused chaos on many highways in Germany on Tuesday night.

The traffic jam on the A2 near Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia caused by heavy snowfall did not resolve until early Tuesday morning.

In the icy cold, the driver and passengers spent the whole night, and therefore more than twelve hours, in their stuck vehicles.

As early as Monday afternoon, trucks got stuck on the highway because of the snow.

The backwater meanwhile stretched over 37 kilometers.

The autobahn was closed in both directions - at times more than 70 kilometers of traffic jams formed around Bielefeld.

No getting through: Autobahn 2 near Bielefeld

Source: dpa / Festim Beqiri

Despite a diversion via the A33, the situation hardly eased on Tuesday night, as a police spokeswoman said.

"It will be a long time before the ball has dissolved," said the spokeswoman.

The ADAC recommended driving around the area extensively.

All rest areas are busy.

display

According to the police, the situation near Dortmund, where the A2 was also blocked, was a little less dramatic.

Dozens of trucks got stuck on the road in the direction of Oberhausen on Monday afternoon and had to be freed by the technical relief organization, the police said.

In the meantime, according to the situation center, the backwater was ten kilometers long, but it broke up during the night.

The police registered 340 violations of a truck driving ban - actually vehicles up to 7.5 tons were not allowed to be on the highway until 10 p.m.

The police warned the short message service Twitter against driving on the A2 in the direction of Oberhausen.

The roadways are "mirror-smooth".

The technical relief organization and the fire brigade took care of the drivers in both traffic jams and distributed hot drinks.

Hope to relax after a lot of snow in Saxony-Anhalt 

display

After the heavy snowfall, it is important in Saxony-Anhalt to keep the roads and rails free for traffic across the country.

At the start of the week, snow drifts had repeatedly hampered the work of the winter services.

Meanwhile, concerns about the homeless are growing, especially given the freezing temperatures.

As a spokeswoman for the station mission in Magdeburg described, mainly homeless people come to protect themselves from the snow and cold.

She referred to a particular emergency, since fewer people than usual are likely to be in a room at the same time due to the corona pandemic.

In the meantime, the evangelical city mission in Halle said that, in view of the onset of winter, people had reported to the warming room, for example, to spontaneously donate to those in need.

A spokesman for Diakonie Mitteldeutschland appealed to society not to avert its gaze from the needy, especially when it is freezing cold, and to offer them concrete help.

Further frosty temperatures in Thuringia 

display

The residents of Thuringia also have to be prepared for winter weather and related problems on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Education, schools in some districts and cities are still closed on Tuesday.

For example, schools in Erfurt, Weimar, Jena and Gera should not open.

On Monday there were no lessons anywhere in Thuringia due to the weather.

A high blanket of snow lay over large parts of the country, so that train and bus traffic was also severely restricted.

In the closed schools, there is no emergency care and no face-to-face lessons for groups of students for whom this is possible under the current Corona rules.

Meanwhile, the Deutsche Post DHL Group announced that it would be delivering letters and parcels again on Tuesday if the weather and road conditions improve.

Because of the large amount of snow, delivery was waived across the board in the Free State on Monday, according to the company, with a few exceptions.

According to the German Weather Service (DWD), heavy clouds and occasional snowfall can be expected in Thuringia on Tuesday.

It should loosen up in the second half of the day.

Freezing temperatures between twelve and eight are expected.

Saxony: Hope for relaxation in public transport after snow chaos

After the heavy snowfall with drifts, the transport companies in Saxony hope that the situation will normalize.

“The main routes in particular are cleared of snow at night.

We also have clearing vehicles from the city cleaning service in use, ”said the spokesman for the Leipzig transport company Marc Backhaus.

Meter by meter, the tracks should be cleared.

"We hope for an emergency operation on Tuesday, but normal operation is not yet in sight," explained Backhaus.

In addition to the snowfall, the biggest problem was the strong wind, which had caused strong winds on Monday.

As a result, all tram and bus traffic in the trade fair city had been stopped, and the regional buses did not run in the region.

Even in Dresden and Chemnitz, public transport passengers cannot yet expect regular operation.

"We hope for stability in operations, but there will still be delays on some connections," emphasized Falk Lösch from the Dresden transport company.

It takes a lot of work to free the tracks from the enormous amounts of snow.

display

The weather forecast makes the transport companies confident.

According to the German Weather Service, no new snow should come in the next few days.

However, the white splendor is retained, because it will be extremely frosty until the weekend.

During the day, temperatures hardly rose above minus seven degrees, at night double-digit values ​​below zero are to be expected.

It could be particularly cold on Wednesday night.

If it clears up, local severe frost with minus 20 degrees is possible.

Experts: Severe frost is not a problem for nature

The severe frost with double-digit minus degrees in the next few days does not pose a problem for nature. "Plants and animals are also prepared for hard winters," said Nabu spokeswoman Birgit Königs, "no stocks collapse, even if individual animals are this winter not survive. ”From nature's point of view, this is even a sensible process to guarantee species conservation with healthy animals in the next generation.

Animals such as deer or wild boar would of course take longer to search for food in snow and ice, said Königs.

The kingfisher will have problems because it needs open streams and rivers for its food search and because of its low weight cannot add too much.

In general, however, nature has developed many effective strategies against severe cold: Trees pull the nutrients from the leaves into the trunk and then shed the leaves, animals look for sheltered places or fall into hibernation like the hedgehog and the bat or hibernation like the badger .

Hard winters also help to decimate pests such as the bark beetle, said Friedrich Louen from the Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz.

Bark beetle larvae and pupae that have nested under spruce bark suffer from severe frost and die from around minus four degrees, Louen said.

The same applies to young beetles from minus seven degrees.

However, a significant proportion of the bark beetles, between 10 and 40 percent of the population, do not overwinter in the tree, but in the ground, where it is better protected.

Therefore, the severe frost brings relief when it comes to bark beetles, but by no means the all-clear.

A popular guest on balconies and in gardens - the squirrel - currently rests mostly in its sheltered quarters, but also wakes up again and again and looks for nuts and other food from the previously created storage hiding places.