Heavy snowfall disrupts traffic in J-K

With road and air traffic disrupted across the state, heavy snowfall threw normal life out of gear across Jammu and Kashmir since last night.

Giving details, sources said the border Poonch town witnessed heavy snowfall after nearly two decades. With all the shops and other business establishments closed, the town today wore a deserted look as nearly 2-3 feet snow had accumulated there.

It was still snowing at mountains around Poonch town and nearby areas indicating closure of all mountainous passes along the Line of Control (LoC), sources said. All the mountains in the area had turned white due to heavy snowfall, they pointed out.

Though areas in Krishna Ghati sector, which has witnessed spurt in ceasefire violations by Pakistan too recorded heavy snowfall, the Army troops are maintaining high level of alert in view of the possibility of damage caused to barbed wire fence along the LoC.

The Katra town, the base camp to Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in Trikuta Hills, too had 17.6 mm of snow fall from 8.30 am to 2.30 pm. The Srinagar town recorded 21.7 mm of snowfall during the period, Qazigund and Banihal (15.8 mm each), Jawahar tunnel (14.7 mm), Batote (14.5 mm), Kokernag (13.6 mm) and Bani (9.8 mm).
The Kashmir Valley was cut off from rest of the country as road and air traffic to it from Jammu remained suspended due to bad weather conditions. All Srinagar bound flights from Jammu were cancelled due to poor visibility, sources said. The Srinagar bound Indigo Airlines flight kept waiting at Jammu airport along with the passengers for nearly four hours and finally it returned to Delhi.

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