Russia’s capital Moscow has experienced its heaviest snowfall in more than two centuries, meteorologists from Moscow State University said on Thursday.

Images from the city, home to around 13 million people, showed residents struggling to move through deep snow in central districts, while commuter trains across the wider Moscow region were delayed and motorists encountered long traffic jams on Thursday evening, The Caspian Post reports, citing Euronews.

“January was a cold and unusually snowy month in Moscow,” the university said in a statement posted on social media. “By 29 January, the Moscow State University Meteorological Observatory had recorded almost 92 millimetres of precipitation, which is already the highest figure in the last 203 years,” it added.

In some areas of the capital, snowdrifts reached depths of up to 60 centimetres on Thursday. Meteorologists explained that snow consists largely of air, meaning the thickness of snow accumulating on the ground can significantly exceed official precipitation measurements, which calculate the amount of water that has fallen.

According to the observatory, the record snowfall was driven by deep and extensive cyclones, accompanied by sharp atmospheric fronts moving across the Moscow region.

“There was much more snow when I was a kid, but now we practically don’t have any snow at all - there used to be much more,” said Pavel, a 35-year-old Moscow resident, speaking to AFP.

Earlier this month, Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka region declared a state of emergency after a powerful snowstorm left its main city partially paralysed.