Mountains and passes

Forecast for today and tomorrow at the passes, tunnels and crossings of the Zone. Mountain temperatures are worked out from the observations at Talas, 1,270 m; at the height of the Fergana Gateway they run about 12° colder.

Road conditions and closures on State Route 1 are announced by the Highway Patrol Corps. The Fergana Gateway is closed by snow on about 20 days in an average winter.

The Otmek station

The station below the Otmek Pass has kept watch over the road into the Suusamyr valley since Soviet times. Its observer reads the snow depth each morning, and its reports go to the forecasting office in Talas and to the Highway Patrol post at the mouth of the Otmek valley.

Glaciers

Several hundred small glaciers feed the Talas and the Chu. The glaciers, the Manas Peak observatory and the upper gauging stations lie beyond the line; the observatory, run by Talas State University since 1992 at 3,850 m, shares its weather and snow readings with the Service. Its records show that the glaciers of the upper Talas basin lost about a fifth of their area between 1970 and 2020, and that the snout of the Manas Glacier has drawn back about 450 m since 1970. The inventory of 2014–2018 counted 268 glaciers in the Iradi part of the basin.