AFP images from the city of around 13 million people showed residents struggling to make their way through heavy piles of snow on the streets in its central district.

Commuter trains in the Moscow area were delayed, AFP reporters witnessed, and cars were stuck in long traffic jams on Thursday evening.

"January was a cold and unusually snowy month in Moscow," the university said on social media.

"By January 29, the Moscow State University Meteorological Observatory had recorded almost 92 mm of precipitation, which is already the highest value in the last 203 years," it added.

Snow piles on the ground reached as high as 60 centimetres (24 inches) in some parts of the capital on Thursday.

Snow is mostly air, meaning the level of settled snow far surpasses scientific measurements of precipitation -- which measures the amount of water that has fallen.

The record snowfall was "caused by deep and extensive cyclones with sharp atmospheric fronts passing over the Moscow region", the observatory said.

"There was much more (snow) when I was a kid, but now we practically don't have any snow at all, there used to be much more," Pavel, a 35-year-old bartender and Moscow resident, told AFP, grumbling about a feeling of "emptiness" in the dark, snowy winter.

Earlier this month, Russia's far east Kamchatka region declared an emergency situation due to a massive snowstorm that left its major city partially paralysed.

Images, widely circulated online, showed huge snow piles reaching up to the second storey of buildings and people digging their way through roads as snow blanketed cars on either side.