Heavy rain and strong winds yesterday caused problems across much of the country, resulting in widespread flooding and damage to crops, wreaking chaos on the roads and even ripping the roofs off some buildings in the Peloponnese.

In Athens heavy rain caused serious congestion on the roads but there were few reports of accidents. On Schistos Avenue near the Skaramanga Shipyards, west of the capital, two people were injured when the car they had been traveling in skidded on the slippery asphalt and careered into railings at the side of the road.

The rain also led to the flooding of several basement and ground-floor homes and stores across Attica and the provinces. The fire services in the prefecture of Attica, Ileia and Aetoloacarnania received dozens of calls from shopkeepers and homeowners asking for water to be pumped out of their flooded premises.

The problems caused by the bad weather in the Peloponnese were more serious. Parts of the peninsula were hit by small tornadoes which damaged farmland and whipped the roofs of some homes and a school in Ileia, a prefecture that was badly affected by the catastrophic forest fires of August 2007. Residents whose homes were damaged told Kathimerini that they were using plastic sheeting as temporary roofing.

Strong winds also caused disruptions in coastal shipping, leading to the mooring of passenger ferries at Piraeus, Lavrio and Rafina and also of some vessels at ports in the Aegean and the Ionian. In some areas winds reportedly reached 9 on the Beaufort scale.

There was even some snow yesterday, chiefly in mountainous parts of northern Greece. The snowfall was heaviest in the prefectures of Florina and Kastoria.

Meteorologists said that the bad weather was unlikely to abate in most parts of the country over the next few days, noting that strong winds would probably cause more problems at sea.