Blizzards hit northeast and centre but skip still-grey Beijing
Seven provinces raise alert to second-highest level but flurries miss the capital, which is approaching its longest snowless winter
Blizzards across large swathes of central and eastern China have marked the start of the lunar year, threatening to disrupt the plans of millions of holiday travellers, but completely bypassing Beijing amid one of its longest snow-free winters yet.
The national forecaster yesterday upgraded its blizzard alert to yellow - the third highest of a four-tier warning system - for Shaanxi , Shanxi , Henan , Hubei , Shandong , Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. The bad weather was expected to last until this afternoon or tomorrow, Xinhua reported.
Heavy snow was likely to disrupt the travel plans of tens of millions of people returning to the cities from their home provinces at the end of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.
All highways in four major cities in Hebei and most highways in Henan were closed yesterday due to dangerous driving conditions, Xinhua reported.
But no snow fell in the capital. Beijing usually sees snowfall before the end of November, but the previous precipitation of any kind - a mere 0.2mm of rain - was on October 25. With no snow for more than 100 days, the capital is in the grips of its second-longest snow-free winter yet. The record stands at 124 snow-free days during the winter 1970-1971.
The capital did see sporadic flurries in some suburbs over the winter. The most recent was on Saturday night when Daxing district recorded 0.3mm of snowfall. However, the Beijing weather station said the isolated incident did not qualify as a citywide snowfall.
