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Rheda-Wiedenbrück: A car drives on the completely snowed-in Autobahn 2
Photo: Marcel Kusch / dpa
Snow mountains in East Westphalia, freezing rain in the Ruhr area: the heavy onset of winter has pushed the clearance services to their limits.
The police had to block highways as smooth as glass, there were hundreds of accidents, and trains were canceled due to iced overhead lines.
Buses stood still in many places.
In cities like Bielefeld, numerous roads were impassable.
Cars got stuck in deep drifts of snow.
There were no trains between Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia and between Hamburg and Hanover - there were restrictions between Hamburg and Berlin, Deutsche Bahn announced on its website.
The Leipzig / Halle region is also not served by long-distance traffic.
"Particularly strong winds and drifting snow make the emergency services to create," it said.
Long-distance traffic between Germany and the Netherlands was discontinued.
In North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony there were also problems in regional traffic - as in Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony.
The situation at the train stations is calm.
Most of the people followed the recommendation of the German Weather Service and stayed at home.
In NRW, several cities and districts completely stopped bus traffic - such as Münster and Dortmund.
"The snowstorm is not over yet," said meteorologist Simon Trippler from the German Weather Service (DWD) in Offenbach.
"The hotspots are the Lower Rhine, Münsterland, East Westphalia, northern Thuringia, south-eastern Lower Saxony and southern Saxony-Anhalt."
Five to ten centimeters of snow, locally also up to 20 centimeters, must still be expected over the course of Sunday.
The wind continues with gusts of up to 70 kilometers per hour.
“You definitely didn't get through that.
We'll have to wait until tonight with that. "
Circus tent collapsed under snow load
A circus tent collapsed in Hagen due to the large amount of snow.
13 animals were rescued.
The seven horses, two camels, two goats and two llamas that were in the tent were unharmed, according to the police.
Rescue forces freed six people from a suspension railway in Wuppertal.
The train could no longer run due to the icy weather and had stopped, said a fire department spokesman.
The passengers were freed from lofty heights with turntable ladders.
All are unharmed.
The home game of Arminia Bielefeld against Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga in the evening was canceled due to the massive onset of winter in the region, as was the home game of the second division soccer club SC Paderborn against 1. FC Heidenheim in the afternoon.
In Bielefeld, the police temporarily blocked Autobahn 2 on Bielefelder Berg.
Because the strong wind kept blowing new snow onto the roadway, the snow clearing vehicles couldn't keep up.
A strong easterly wind blew all the fresh snow from the night again and again onto the lanes that had just been cleared.
According to the traffic control center NRW, traffic jams and delays occurred on many motorways, especially in Münsterland, East Westphalia and the Ruhr area - in many places, cars could only drive very slowly.
Since Saturday afternoon, there have been 222 accidents due to the weather, said a spokesman for the state control center of the police in the morning.
Two people were seriously injured and 26 were slightly injured.
In East Hesse, truck traffic on the autobahns came to a standstill on Sunday night.
The police in Bad Hersfeld said that more than 50 articulated lorries could not have overcome the inclines due to the slippery road surface and their weight.
On the incline in the Knüllwald to the 448.1 meter high Pommer in the direction of Kassel, traffic came to a complete standstill from midnight to four in the morning.
35 articulated lorries got stuck in all three lanes due to the snow.
Several highway police patrols and gritting vehicles were able to get the traffic flowing again after four hours.
In the opposite direction, the uphill stretch to Pommer was blocked for about two hours - ten articulated trucks got stuck.
People without a permanent residence are particularly exposed to the cold without protection.
During the freezing winter night, emergency services in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, approached numerous homeless people and brought them to warm accommodation.
A large homeless camp was also cleared in Berlin, which, however, also met with criticism.
Left groups called for a protest on Saturday and demanded that the former residents of the camp be allowed to return there.
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wit / dpa