Heavy snowfalls have hit the eastern part of South Africa, paralyzing traffic on the roads. Drivers were trapped in buried cars for hours. Authorities reported the death of one person.
Unusually heavy snowfall caused major disruptions to roads in eastern South Africa on Friday, with the highway connecting Johannesburg with the coastal city of Durban particularly hard hit, leaving drivers stranded in their cars overnight.
The most difficult situation was near the Van Reenen Pass in the Drakensberg Mountains. Emergency services provided drivers with blankets and hot meals.
A woman is dead
A 39-year-old woman who was trapped in a car on a snow-covered road near the town of Mooiplas, about 430 km from Johannesburg, died of hypothermia. She was pronounced dead in hospital, emergency services said.
As much as two meters of snow
Traffic was disrupted on a total of 30 kilometres of roads on Sunday morning, almost two days after the first vehicles became stuck in the snow.
In some places, as much as two meters of snow fell. As local media emphasize, such heavy rainfall is rare in this part of South Africa. At the time when summer is ending in our latitudes, winter is coming to an end in the southern hemisphere.