(CNN) It's not often you see would-be priests pelting each other with snowballs. But as the old saying goes, "When in Rome..."

Residents of the Italian capital woke up on Monday to find their city covered in snow, the unusually freezing conditions prompting some seminarians to launch a snowball fight in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.

Schools were closed and traffic brought to a standstill, with temperatures across the country plummeting to between minus 4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit) and minus 8 degrees Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the UK Met Office.

The average high in Rome for the month of February is 13 degrees Celsius (55.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and the average low is 3.5 degrees Celsius (38.3 degrees Fahrenheit). For March, the high is usually 15.2 degrees Celsius (59.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and the low is 5.2 degrees Celsius (41.3 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The chilly weather, which has been dubbed "the beast from the east," is the result of cold winds from Siberia sweeping across Europe.

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