Srinagar:
High altitude areas of Jammu and Kashmir, including the famous ski resort of Gulmarg, experienced the season's first heavy snowfall leading to the closure of 434-km long Srinagar-Leh national highway, officials said.
Traffic on the strategic highway, the only road linking the frontier region of Ladakh with the rest of the state, was temporarily suspended on Friday morning after the snowfall, a traffic department spokesman said.
He said about five inches of snow had accumulated on the road at 11,578 foot high Zojilla pass, 107 km from here, which attracts the heaviest snowfall in winter and remains closed for nearly six months each year.
Nearly half a dozen Srinagar-bound trucks were stranded and efforts are on to take them to safety, the spokesman said.
"If weather permits, the highway will be thrown open to traffic again in the coming days before scheduled closure later this month," the spokesman said.
The snowfall also snapped road links with the border towns of Gurez, Tangdhar, Machil, Karnah and Keran in north Kashmir, official sources said.
Reports of moderate to heavy snowfall were received from almost all high altitude areas including Gulmarg, Sonamarg, Khilanmarg, Aferwath, Sadna Top, Gurez, Pahalgam, Amarnath cave shrine, Razdan top and Z-gali.
While Gulmarg hill resort was covered under a four-inch blanket of snow its peripheral areas recorded over one feet of snow, they said.
Winter in Kashmir this time started early with a mild snowfall in the high altitude areas last month.
The icy winds, coupled with rains in the plains including Srinagar, sent the temperature across the region plummeting by several degrees.
Gulmarg, a star attraction for tourists in winter, was the coldest place in the Valley as the minimum temperature there plunged to minus 2.2 degree Celsius, a spokesman of the MET office said.
However, Leh town of Ladakh was the coldest place in the state with a low of minus 4.0 degrees Celsius.