Due to last winter's increased precipitation nationwide, north China is being spared some of the worst natural disasters of the spring season -- dust and sandstorms as well as drifting sand.

However, drought in the north and unusually low temperatures in the south and southwest provinces threaten regional spring sowing and are set to "come on the heels of this good luck," meteorologists warned yesterday.

Dust-carrying windstorms may occur this weekend or early next week in parts of arid north and northwest China, including Gansu and Hebei provinces, Ningxia Hui and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions, Zhang Guocai, a senior expert for China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said yesterday.

Zhang and his colleagues told the public that, despite the optimistic predictions, people should remain aware of the possibility of strong spring sandstorms, which can cause serious damage.

"It only takes a few of the disastrous sandstorms that reduce visibility to zero to cause heavy damage or death," they said while releasing their latest report yesterday.

For instance, 79 were reported dead and 14 others missing during a sandstorm, dubbed the "black wind" by witnesses, in northwest China's Gansu Province on May 5, 1993 though only a few such storms were recorded that year.

"Utmost sand or dust storm-prone days may be less this year than the average of a normal year, lessening the possibility of such disasters in the North," they told media.

The number of annual sandstorms has declined over the period from 1954 to 2001 with the least number recorded in the 1990s, CMA's statistics indicate.

The experts attributed the improvement mainly to massive ecosystem rehabilitation, particularly in the areas of logging, grazing and land reclamation launched in recent years.

This year, only two sand or dust storms were observed in the North. Most of the sand was blown from deserts in the eastern parts of northwest China with no serious damage reported.

CMA can forecast such disastrous climate changes three to five days in advance with the help of an early warning system launched in 2001.

This spring, drought may linger over parts of the North with less rain predicted in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Overviewing climate changes across China since last winter, CMA's senior experts stressed that "China experienced its 17th consecutive warm winter" with mercury standing at one to two Celsius higher than that of a normal year.

(China Daily February 28, 2003)