Dressed in white: K-P sees first rain, snow of the new year

Residents in Shangla face difficulties due to outages, blocked roads

PESHAWAR/CHITRAL/SHANGLA: Parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, including Peshawar, received the first rainfall of 2016 on Monday, making the weather pleasant and settling the dust.



Meteorological department officials have predicted a rainy spell across the province which will drop the mercury.

People in upper parts of K-P, including Chitral, saw the first snowfall of the year which blocked roads. The weather has created problems for people in tents in the wake of the earthquake on October 26, 2015. Areas of Lowari Top, Garam Chashma, Kalash valleys, Mastuj, Buni and Tor Kahu were covered in about a foot of snow. Pakistan Meteorological Department recorded Parachinar as the most frigid area at -9 degrees Celsius. The area also received 39 mm of rainfall.

According to the weather forecaster of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Musarat Shah, temperatures are expected to fall further because of rainfall and snow on the hills. “We haven’t received reports about snowfall from our observatories, but it rained sporadically throughout Monday across the province.”

Blanketed in white

In Shangla, snow started falling on Sunday night, causing landslides and closing all the link roads leading to the hilly areas. Power was also out in Besham since Sunday night and the area was without electricity till the filing of this report. “The temperature is below freezing point and we cannot even get out of our houses,” Mazhar Hussain, a resident of Ajmer, Shangla, told The Express Tribune. “We are facing problems in keeping our houses warm since the government banned the sale of firewood and there is no alternative source of fuel like Sui gas.”

However, despite the ban, some children were selling firewood on Swat-Besham road.

“We are eight siblings and very poor. Therefore, I sell firewood on the road in winters [to feed my family],” said seven-year-old Asif, whose father works in a coal mine in Hyderabad. “My sister also sells firewood with me.”



Another boy, Kashif, from Macharh, Shangla said the sale of firewood allowed them to buy food. He added his father also works at a coal mine in Darra Adam Khel. “After the madrassa, we come out  on the roads and start work. I do not go to school because government schools are far from my house.”  He added most children of the area do not to go to school due to either financial constraints or distance.

However, the snow-capped mountains of Shangla were a sight for sore eyes as far as tourists were concerned. “Before coming here, we had only heard about the beauty of Shangla, but now we have seen it for ourselves,” Rizwan, a tourist from Punjab, told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5^th, 2016.