Hundreds of drivers are still stranded on a long stretch of a highway north of Tokyo due to a massive snowstorm that began accumulating Wednesday, according to reports.
The Kanetsu Expressway, which connects Tokyo and Niigata Prefecture, in Niigata, Japan, has been saddled with as many as 2,100 vehicles due to the heavy snowfall, Kyodo News reported. The area’s Ground Self-Defense Force and others have been shoveling snow the last few days.
As of Friday morning, about 260 vehicles were still on the well-traveled thoroughfare in the lane bound for Tokyo, East Nippon Expressway Co. told Kyodo News.
The opposite lane also experienced some gridlock, but that was cleared Friday.
“I hardly slept, and I was worried because I had absolutely no information (about the situation),” a 48-year-old man, who was driving to his home near the capital from Niigata Prefecture, told the publication.
The snow jam began about 6 p.m. Wednesday after a vehicle became stranded near the Shiozawa Ishiuchi Service Area in the lane bound for Tokyo. On Thursday, there were 1,100 vehicles stuck on the expressway.
“It is regrettable that (the operator) failed to gather accurate information and that it made a large upward correction,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, the government’s top spokesman.
Several commuters were forced to camp out in their vehicles overnight in the season’s most bitterly low temperatures.
According to the police and expressway operator, the line of cars stretched to more than 10 miles at one point Thursday.
The Niigata Local Meteorological Office forecasts more heavy snowfall throughout the weekend in the region and warned drivers to be prepared for possible further traffic delays, according to Kyoto News.
Such snowstorm nightmares happen every so often across the globe, including in Atlanta. The Georgia metropolitan area has been slammed with traffic-jamming snowstorms on more than one occasion. In most recent memory, many may recall the “Snowmageddon” of 2014. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Mandi Albright reported in 2018 that other similar weather nightmares occurred in 1982 and 1993.
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