Penza, 28 June 2015. PenzaNews. The Penza city area experienced a thunderstorm with heavy wind late on Sunday, June 28. It caused a traffic jam on a Penza–Shemysheika highway in the city-ward direction and broke a tree in Zasechnoe village, which tore the power lines when it fell.

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The hot and still weather that remained in the city throughout the weekend changed in mere minutes, the bystanders told PenzaNews agency: the sky was quickly covered with thick dark clouds from the south, followed by drizzle that quickly grew into heavy rain.

The wind broke tree branches, partially blocking some roads in Zasechnoe, and a tall birch tree by one of the apartment buildings that fell on power lines and hit a steel-built garage.

The accident left dozens of houses without power. The locals attempted to remove the fallen tree on their own using axes, as, according to them, they could not make a call to the emergency services.

A 40-minute, hundreds of meters long traffic jam blocked a Penza–Shemysheika highway. It was caused by a giant greenhouse – a large construction of metal and transparent polycarbonate – that was torn off the nearby garden market and carried to the road, its fragments littering the field.

The garden market itself also sustained damages. The freak weather affected not just the greenhouses, but also the flora, such as decorative cedar trees that were uprooted by the wind.