Olya Karabach stood shivering in a light fall jacket Tuesday, whipped by wind and snow as she waited for a friend at Gorky Park.


"It's never snowed like this in October", said Karabach.


To be precise, the last time Moscow had such an early snowstorm was 16 years ago, so Olya Karabach, 15, can be excused for not remembering.


A wet snowfall that began on Monday evening turned into a full-fledged arctic storm by Tuesday, blanketing the city with a layer of clean snow and sending temperatures plummeting to minus 9 degrees Celsius. Many Moscow residents had their heat turned on in the past few days, just in time for the frigid blast. But others are still without warmth.


"I woke up this morning and it was snowing in my apartment through the cracks in the window", said Gary Testa, an American marketing consultant who lives near the Russian parliament building. "I only realized that we had no heat when I saw ice on the inside of my windows".


Parliament, incidentally, has been fully heated since the session began in mid-September.


Out on the street, car door locks froze, and many of the motorists lucky enough to get into their automobiles had trouble getting them started. Commuters waited in the cold 30 to 40 minutes longer than usual due to breakdowns in Moscow's aging fleet of buses, trolleys and trams, many of which have not been prepared for winter, Itar-Tass reported.


Not everyone was put out by the sudden cold snap. Lyubov Shcherbakova, 68, took her daily stroll through Gorky Park as usual.


"Yes it's early for it to be so cold", she said with a healthy smile. "But one has to get one's fresh air".


Shcherbakova cheerfully noted that if the cold kept up, park officials would soon flood the sidewalks and she could go skating.


For those who dread the onset of frigid weather, the outlook is not encouraging. The state meteorological center's forecast for Wednesday calls for temperatures to dip as low as minus 11 degrees Celsius. On the brighter side, the official extended forecast calls for a relatively mild winter. Then again, when has the weatherman ever been right?