Snowfalls of an unusual extent caused significant problems on its road network today South Africawhere at noon local time people remained trapped after spending the night in their vehicles.

The national road N3, which connects the Johannesburg with the eastern coastal city of Durban was one of the hardest hit and many parts of it were closed, even if diverting traffic was impossible, authorities said.

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Emergency services have been working throughout the night and are still working to help people trapped in their cars, but at this time it is not known how many people are trapped or in what condition they are in, he said an official of the company that manages the highways, h Tanya Doograon the ENCA television network.

Blankets and meals have been distributed to some of the stranded drivers, the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government said in a press release issued this afternoon.

Trucks have been parked on the side of the road since yesterday and “buses traveling between provinces have been stranded for about 7 hours at gas stations,” Simone Zouane, a communications officer at RTMC, the main body that manages the road, told AFP. security in the country.

In some areas, its height of snow reached up to 2 meters, the road safety promotion organization Arrive Alive announced in a post on X.

For its part, South Africa’s border management authority announced that it had closed three border crossings with Lesotho in the west due to the “significant risk” posed by the weather.

More snowfall is expected and authorities have issued warnings in various parts of the country, a meteorologist, the Lutando Massiminispeaking of “extreme phenomena”.