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Shimla, Feb 5 (IANS) Highways and roads in many parts of Himachal Pradesh were blocked after snowfall for the second day Tuesday. Towns in upper Shimla and the link to Manali were cut off with heavy snow cover piled on roads, officials said. Traffic movement beyond Dhalli, 10 km from here, was suspended since a large stretch of Hindustan-Tibet Road was under a thick blanket of snow. The entire Kinnaur district and towns in Shimla district such as Narkanda, Jubbal, Kotkhai, Kumarsain, Kharapathar, Rohru and Chopal are cut off due to heavy snow, a government official here told IANS. Connectivity on the Kullu-Manali national highway remained snapped near Patlikuhl, some 20 km before Manali, the official said. "Over 100 routes in the interiors of Shimla, Kullu, Chamba, Mandi, Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti districts have been closed," Onkar Sharma, managing director of Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC), told IANS. According to the weather office here, heavy snow and rain will continue till Wednesday. Tourist destinations near here such Narkanda experienced snowfall while rain lashed Shimla. Manali and nearby Solang ski slopes and Dalhousie in Chamba district too were covered in snow. The minimum temperature in Manali, with 14 cm of snow, was minus 1.2 degree Celsius, the weather office said. The town of Kalpa in Kinnaur, around 250 km from here, experienced a massive 54.7 cm of snow and recorded a low of minus 3.4 degrees Celsius. The government has advised the people to stay indoors in Kullu, Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur districts and not to go through avalanche-prone areas. Keylong, headquarters of Lahaul-Spiti, saw three feet of snow. Rain lashed lower areas of the state such as Dharamsala, Palampur, Solan, Nahan, Bilaspur, Una, Hamirpur and Mandi, pulling down temperatures. The minimum temperature was 4.2 degrees Celsius in Dharamsala, which received 32.4 cm of rain, and 2.8 degrees in Shimla, which got 21.2 mm of rain.
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