PRAGUE (Bloomberg) — Blizzard conditions, record-low temperatures and high winds persisted Tuesday from Bulgaria to Baku, disrupting transportation and complicating efforts to respond to a calamity that has claimed hundreds of lives in central and eastern Europe in the last week.

Palm trees lining the beaches of the Adriatic sea city of Split in Croatia were bowed under snow while streets in the port town were clogged due to a lack of equipment for dealing with winter conditions. Winds in neighboring Slovenia reached as high as 112 mph, slowing truck transport on highways and roads through the Alpine country.

“Split has not seen this kind of weather in 50 years and citizens were completely unprepared as they don’t have the proper clothes, the proper tools or even proper car tires,” said deputy mayor Jure Sundov in a phone interview. “By now they heeded our advice to help themselves and are trying to clean snow and ice with whatever they have.”

A mix of cold Siberian air from the north and winter snows from the Mediterranean Sea into the Balkans are forecast to persist for at least a week from Russia to the German border, according to local forecasts from various meteorological services. Temperatures in the Czech Republic may fall to as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit) in the coming days, according to the Czech Hydrometeorlogical Institute.

“I’m shoveling snow and scraping ice off the sidewalk and in an hour it’ll all be under snow again,” Krassimir Popov, a food store owner in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, said in an interview. “It’s an unrewarding job.”

Demand for electricity, hot water and natural gas has surged, also leading to fires in homes and businesses from overheating or bad wiring. Power consumption in Poland rose to a record Monday, grid operator PSE Operator said and reached a two-year high in Estonia.

“In the first week of February when orders for gas increased by more than 50 percent of the average standard supply, we couldn’t meet the demand by 100 percent,” Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said at a press conference in Vilnius Tuesday. “But the European consumers were not hurt because there is more than enough gas at storage facilities across Europe. The amount of gas in storages can meet the demand in similar cold weathers for the next 30 days.”

Bulgaria’s Black Sea ports of Varna, Burgas and Balchik closed Tuesday because of strong winds, authorities said. Some 60 towns and villages in northern Bulgaria are without electricity, affecting some 150,000 people as strong winds cut power cables, while floods in the south disrupted power supplies for 20 villages, the utilities said today.