BEIJING – A cold snap sweeping through China brought rare snowfall on Dec 18, as far south as the province of Guangdong, while temperatures in the chilly north plunged to near historic lows for the month of December.

In a week of unexpectedly frigid weather, temperatures have fallen to lows below zero in northern areas, disrupting road, rail, as well as air transport, even causing a brake failure in a commuter train in China’s capital, Beijing.

Forecasters early in November predicted a warmer winter in 2023 due to the El Nino phenomenon, while warning that temperatures could fluctuate after one of the warmest Octobers in decades.

On Dec 18, snowfall blanketed the top of a mountain in a city just 80km north of the provincial capital Guangzhou, where snow is generally limited to the northernmost areas.

A low of 8 deg C was forecast for Guangzhou, compared with the province’s typical early winter temperatures that hover in the double digits, while January averages around 14 deg C.

Guangzhou officials urged precautions, especially for the old and young who may be vulnerable to “cold wave illnesses”, as winter advances.

In neighbouring Guangxi province, where President Xi Jinping on Dec 15 called for an “all-out” emergency response, sleet has been forecast for some cities, including Guilin.  

Snow flurries were seen in the commercial hub of Shanghai on Dec 18.

In Beijing, morning temperatures on Dec 18 dropped to minus 15.5 deg C – near the 1952 historic low of minus 15.2 deg C on Dec 19 and minus 17.7 deg C on Dec 20 that year. The lowest recorded December temperature was minus 18.3 deg C.

Trapped tourists

Low temperatures will prevail until Dec 21, the national forecaster warned, with northern areas, Inner Mongolia and some areas around the Yangtze River to be 7 deg C lower than is typical.

On Dec 18, the city of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia was expected to experience a low of minus 22 deg C, while the mercury was expected to sink to minus 5 deg C in Zhengzhou in the central province of Henan.

Rain and snow could lash the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and its south, including parts of Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, as well as Shanghai. Local heavy snow can be expected, the forecaster added.

Taking advantage of the early sub-zero weather, Harbin, a city in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, will host its largest-ever ice sculpture festival in a park sprawling across 811,000 sq m.

More than 1,000 features and landscapes in the park have been fashioned from about 250,000 cubic m of ice and snow harvested from the frozen Songhua River.

But efforts to cash in on the cold weather led to a downside for more than 50 tourists who were trapped for over two hours on Dec 16 in cable cars ascending a mountain in eastern Zhejiang province, after windy weather triggered a halt for safety reasons.

All were unharmed despite freezing conditions in the cable cars, the media said. REUTERS