Heavy snow causes travel problems

Large amounts of snowfall and slippery roads caused by temperatures of down to -20C in places caused problems for both public transport and private cars alike with police registering more than 100 separate road traffic incidents during a 24 hour period, including one death.

Police advised drivers to consider whether journeys were really necessary and to clean snow and ice from their cars properly before driving.

Some rural districts are effectively cut off, meanwhile in the capital Riga dozens of frustrated residents took to social media to complain about roads not being cleared quickly enough. 

Snow continued to fall in many places on the morning of January 4 with Riga recording 22cm of snow cover.

The rapid arrival of the snow is nicely shown in this time-lapse video of the Riga-Tallinn highway near Saulkrasti in northern Latvia posted to Twitter by LTV weatherman Toms Bricis.

However, the arrival of the snow was a boon to Latvia's ski resorts which were finally able to open for business after a tense wait in December. Large numbers of ski fans poured into Latvia from neighboring Estonia and Lithuania too.

Dozens of people took to social media to complain about roads in the capital not being cleared by snowplows, however, Riga city council responded by saying the plows were working around the clock but the snow was filling streets again within half an hour of their passing, and it made sense for the main snow-clearing effort to begin only after snow had finished falling.