It started for a pleasant weekend, but it turned into a nightmare
In the last three decades, there has never been an example of a snowfall that paralyzes the whole country for several days, such as the winter doomsday that began in Siberia on the evening of January 10, 1987. The intense snowfall was caused by the mixing of the extremely cold mass of Arctic air from the north-west and the concomitant mass of high-humidity Mediterranean cyclone from the south-southwest.
The cracking cold air of Arctic origin came with strong, stormy winds, so in the late evening, due to snow barriers built by hurricane winds, serious disruptions to the country’s traffic began to form.
When the blizzard broke out, many were on their way for the weekend; the more affluent behind the wheel of a car, and even more so on scheduled rail or bus services. None of those who set out to visit or visit the countryside had any idea that a weekend that promised to be a pleasant one would turn into a real nightmare.
For the first time in the Kisalföld region, a catastrophic situation arose due to a hurricane wind of 100 kilometers per hour,
but in other parts of the country there was also a stormy wind of 70-80 km / h carrying heavy snow. The torrential snowfall did not stop the next day. By the morning of the eleventh of January, many settlements were already closed to the outside world by a huge snow wall, several meters high.
The nation’s main roads have also become an impassable desert, causing many thousands of cars to be trapped in the snow. And the snow continued to be intense, and the windstorm did not subside,
which led to a nationwide disaster situation in the afternoon.
The extraordinary situation is well illustrated by the fact that even a large Transdanubian city such as Székesfehérvár was isolated from the outside world. In the video embedded below, the Híradó’s contemporary footage shows snapshots of the crisis caused by the “tale”.
The country’s longest highway at the time, the M7, looked like it was driving through Antarctica. Snow dredges, who were in a hurry to free the cars trapped in the snowstorm, also became prisoners of the ice world, and the Hungarian People’s Army’s crawler combat vehicles had to be evacuated to save them.
The labored pregnant woman was rescued in a tank, a tragic accident occurred on the cogwheel
Meanwhile, the temperature also dropped to record depths; In Budapest, it did not show more during the day – the mercury of thermometers at 17 degrees Celsius. However, due to the strong icy wind, the feeling of cold was even stronger. Public transport in the capital was completely paralyzed, and neither buses nor trams traveled on the Grand Boulevard, which had become a snowy desert.
On the evening of January 11, the Hungarian capital was also buried in the snow.
Cars parked next to the sidewalk were buried under a huge wall of snow, and traffic on icy roads and sidewalks regularly became life-threatening in strong gusts of wind.
Authorities have warned everyone not to leave their homes, and offices, public institutions and schools have been temporarily closed. Rural settlements were in the worst situation. Under the mass of frozen snow, power lines were cut off in many places, leaving many settlements without power.
In many villages, the situation has become critical due to the dire depletion of fuel and food.
Only army caterpillars could enter the settlements isolated from the world and transport supplies to the population in distress.
It also happened that a soldier in need of urgent care could only be rescued and taken to hospital by a soldier. The mass approach has been paralyzed across the country,
and sitting in a car in such circumstances was a direct suicide attempt.
It should be added that the winter tires were not even known in Hungary in the 1980s, and with the widespread socialist car brands of the age, Wartburgs, Trabants, Škodas and the rear-wheel-drive diagonal tires Ladák, the snowstorms of the “fairy tale” he set out on a life-threatening survival tour, and many of those who ventured out into the streets and tried to get on foot to get food were taken to the hospital with frostbite injuries.
The extreme weather situation caused several fatal accidents. Of these, perhaps the best known is the tragedy with the Budapest cog railway. On the evening of January 11 at the Tamás Esze School stop
the two assemblies of the cogwheel rushed into each other.
The braking system of train No. 52 froze, causing the train driver to slow down the increasingly accelerating train on the steep track that ran into the train 63 going uphill.
The crashed trains only braked so far at the Organ stop that they stopped. Both train drivers died instantly and many passengers were seriously injured in the biggest catastrophe in the history of the cogwheel.
Zimankós Hungarian records
It was only after three days of intense snowfall that the brutal “fairy tale” began to let go of its grip. However, the relief that started from the south on January 15 did not cause any cloudless joy, and the countryside in the southern counties of the country became a huge mirror ice rink due to the falling tin rain.
Even though extreme weather conditions like the heavy snowfall of 1987 are not really common in the Carpathian Basin, the last hundred years have been full of special cold records. The absolute cold record in Hungary was measured on February 16, 1940 in Miskolc-Görömbölytapolca (today: Miskolctapolca).
The cold of 35 degrees Celsius measured at that time is still an unbreakable record.
The lowest daily average temperature, – 26 degrees Celsius, was measured on March 24, 1942 in Baja, the southern town of Bács-Kiskun County, famous for its fish soup.
The record-breaking snow cover in Hungary is known from the Alps; On February 19, 1947, the thickness of the fallen snow was 151 cm. Regarding the annual average of snowy days, the highest point in Hungary, the 1014 meter high Kékestető is the national record,
which was covered with snow for about 154 days in the winter of 1943-1944.
In the event of prolonged frost, our running and stagnant waters also freeze. In a harsher winter, our largest lake, Lake Balaton, may freeze completely. At this time, the Hungarian sea is reminiscent of the Arctic with its smooth ice armor and bluish glistening ice sheets on the shore.
In the history of Hungarian meteorological records, Lake Balaton was covered for the longest time during the winter of 1962-63, for about 110 days it was covered with ice, and the thickness of the ice armor reached 50 cm.
The weather, if not too often, regularly produces extreme situations.
Such was the case of intense snowfall, which began on 14 March 2013, but was not uniform in intensity from the 1987 “fairy tale”.
In Transdanubia, brutal winds built large snow barriers, which paralyzed traffic in many places, including the M7 motorway. The cold record in March was also broken on March 17, 2013 in Vásárosnamény, where – 18.2 degrees Celsius was measured, which was not the temperature reminiscent of early spring.
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