Tehran came to a complete standstill on January 28 as a heavy snowfall forced schools, universities and businesses to close, while the capital's two mian airports had to reroute flights as far afield as Azerbaijan, leaving hundreds stranded.

The city of around 8.8mn has historically seen huge amounts of snow during winter in recent decades, but in the past few years, and especially this year, rain and snow have been notable for their absence from much of the country. Such dry weather intensified outbreaks of smog, with several cities forced to declare smog holidays, hitting the Iranian economy to the tune of millions of dollars. With Iranians contending with their driest winter in more than 30 years, last week Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it would conduct an expensive cloud seeding programme to try and create wetter weather.

After the snow arrived with a vengeance, the Tehran Municipality, which serves as the local government for 12mn residents within the city and its larger metropolitan area, was slammed by parliamentarians for being unprepared. Its state of unreadiness occurred despite warnings from meteorologists that a cold spell was headed to the capital with reported snowfall expected to be 1.4 metres at its highest. That came to pass, while one small locality just outside the city announced that its daytime temperature had dropped as low as -14 degrees Celsius, a record in recent years.

Tehran’s two busiest airports, Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKA) and the older Mehrabad (THR), cancelled 80 incoming and outgoing flights and diretected jets to land as far away as Baku in the case of one Lufthansa jet, with no return flight scheduled.

At the main international terminal, stranded passengers handed out blankets, water and food vouchers. Trains heading into Tehran reported delays due to reduced speeds on tracks introduced in the north of the country.

Reformist politician and former presidential candidate Mohammad Reza Aref hit out at the local municipality for not inadequate preparations in advance of the cold snap, IRNA reported.

Aref reportedly told the news agency that “the highways of Tehran-Qom and Tehran-Karaj completely disconnected, with people stranded in their cars for hours.”

Tehran regional governor Mohammad-Hossein Moghimi said that while schools would remain closed on January 28, the “council has not decided” whether its offices will remain closed for a second day. Meanwhile, making a somewhat odd request, Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Ali Najafi requested that children of the city “shake trees so the city workers do not have to do all the workd,” IRNA also reported.

Further afield, Gilan Province on the Caspian Sea side of the Alborz mountain range announced that 4,000 homes were disconnected from their electricity supply due to pylons collapsing under the weight of snow.

Meanwhile, the cold front triggered the Legal Medicine Organisation to warn people not to block up ventilation in their homes. More than 400 people haver reportedly died from carbon monoxide poisoning in Iran in the past year.