MURREE: The snowfall which began on Wednesday night continued on Friday with regular intervals and so far one foot snow has fallen on the hill station.

Rashid Bilal of the local Met Office told Dawn that the snowfall was expected to continue until Sunday night, after that the weather will clear.

Tourists from the twin cities have thronged the hill station leading to a traffic jam on Murree Expressway for hours, forcing tourists to return to their homes from Chitta More and Bansra Gali.

In Galyaat region and Murree-Abbottabad Road, about two feet snow has already fallen, and more is expected in the next two days.

Highway machinery was used to clear snow of the roads but due to a mess created by the motorists, it was quite difficult for the the workers to operate machinery on the road smoothly.

The highway department staffers threw salt on the roads so that the visitors did not encounter slippery roads.

Murree city police have instructed the tourists to use old Rawalpindi-Murree-Kashmir Highway (RMK) and not Expressway to avoid problems. Chief Traffic Police Officer (CTO), Rawalpindi, Yousaf Ali Shahid was in Murree on Friday who kept appealing to the tourists to follow the traffic rules to avoid traffic jam and accident in slippery conditions.

A large number of wardens were deployed to ensure that traffic moved smoothly, but because of slippery conditions and the mess created by the violators of traffic rules, their efforts could not bear fruit.

Most areas of Murree faced power supply disconnection till the filing of this report.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2017