Unexpected rain in the west rapidly turned to ice, entombing cars, trains, ATMS, and power lines in addition to half of Slovenia’s forests (roughly 1.2 million acres).

A tiny EU member-state already going through a recession and a bank bailout over billions of euros in toxic debt, Slovenia is now facing the worst economic crisis in two decades.

“Slovenia has witnessed a major natural disaster,” Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek said while visiting the badly-hit town of Ljubno ob Savinji.

A woman looks out of the window of an ice-covered building in Postojna
February 5, 2014.

A car with a smashed rear windscreen is seen amid heavy ice

Here is a picture of a man removing a layer of ice from a facade

Here’s a person methodically removing inches-thick ice from a car with a hammer.

Other cars were hit by trees that buckled under the ice.

The frozen landscape is the new reality, for now.

“In the 35 years I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen anything like this,”
A railway worker said.
“It will take another two months before trains can run again.”

First, drivers had to figure out how to free their cars.

And read road signs…

While also dodging down electrical poles…

And more snow is forecast before Slovenians deal with the added risk of flooding once the ice melts.

“At first they said we’d be here three days. Now they told us two weeks, maybe even longer,” Mateusz Frym, part of a team of Austian emergency workers who came with 26 generators to help, told Reuters. “We have a lot of snow (in Austria), but this is crazy, really crazy.”