At the end of January and during the first few days of February, Slovenia and its capital Ljubljana were hit by a large-scale natural disaster.

During the last two days of January, Slovenia was hit by heavy precipitation, mostly snow and freezing rain, which mixed with sleet brought life to a halt in the Primorska, Notranjska and Koroška regions already on Friday, 31 January 2014. On Saturday, 1 February 2014, snow and freezing rain gripped almost all of Slovenia covering the country and its capital entirely in ice.

In the first few days of February, snow and freezing rain caused serious damage in the entire area of the City of Ljubljana as well. Sleet wreaked havoc on Ljubljana forests and parks, bringing down and thus closing some of the roads in the capital for several days. In some parts of the city, the blizzard caused power cuts, leaving approximately 1500 households in the City of Ljubljana without electricity for several days.

According to first estimates of David Polutnik, Head of the Department of Economic Activities and Traffic of the City of Ljubljana, extreme weather conditions caused severe damage estimated at around 310,000 € in the city and additional 120,000 € in parks and forests.   Forest restoration around Ljubljana will begin as soon as the weather conditions stabilize and will take at least three months. Authorities are regularly removing dangerous and broken branches from pavements and roads and will remain to do so for at least another ten days. Due to trees breaking down, walking in some of the biggest parks in Ljubljana, such as Rožnik, Grajski Grič, Golovec and Šmarna Gora is life threatening.

The capital also faces problems in the Ljubljana ZOO, where several fences have been damaged due to falling and breaking of trees. Most of the animals were moved inside where they remain safe, alive and healthy. However, male and female lynx, the biggest European wildcats, have escaped the ZOO. The runaway male lynx, which is otherwise considered very timid, became an instant hit among the people of Ljubljana who already nicknamed him the Lynx from under the Rožnik Hill (Ris izpod Rožnika). The lynx already has its own Twitter profile which gained more than a thousand followers in only a few hours.

Ice wreaks havoc around Slovenia

Due to sleet, ice and snow, the conditions around the country are very serious. According to first estimates, the sleet already damaged 500,000 hectares of Slovenian forest, or roughly a half of Slovenia's total forest area. Several million cubic metres of wood have been destroyed. The devastation caused by ice is considered the worst in decades.

The falling trees, sleet and snow have so far damaged or completely destroyed 30 kilometres of electricity lines, and another 174 kilometres or nine percent still remain inoperative. On Monday, 3 February 2014, almost 150,000 households were left without electricity. The situation is however slowly improving. The fire-fighters, the civil defence team and the armed forces are doing their best to help those in need and restore power with emergency generators which were also sent in from other countries.

According to first reports, the damage on Slovenian rail infrastructure is estimated at between 15 and 20 million €, not to mention the damage the transport companies will suffer due to the closing down of some parts of the rail. Ministry of Infrastructure and Spatial Planning of the Republic of Slovenia reported that according to unofficial estimates, the cost of the damage in rail transport is estimated at tens of millions of Euro.

The conditions around the country are slowly improving. However, on Wednesday, 5 February 2014, several schools and kindergartens still remained closed, especially in the Notranjska, Gorenjska and Koroška regions and also in some parts of Ljubljana. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for the next few days is still not promising. More precipitation and southwest wind are reportedly on its way. Even though in normal conditions such forecast should not cause any trouble, bad weather can cause further devastation in the areas already severely damaged by the snow storm.