Authorities in China's southwest were scrambling last night to help 6,200 motorists and passengers as freezing rain forced authorities to shut expressways in Guizhou Province and another 8,000 in the neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Thousands of vehicles were forced to wait for help on expressways across the mountainous Guizhou.

Freezing rain?in Guizhou

In addition, another 11,800 people were stranded at bus stations in Guizhou during the New Year traveling season, according to the provincial transportation department.

Guizhou's civil affairs department said officials had set up shelters along the Guixin Expressway, where most of the vehicles are held up by the icy weather. The shelters offer quilts, padded clothes, bottled water, biscuits, bread and instant noodles to the stranded motorists and passengers. The expressway was closed on Saturday night as the mercury dropped below minus 2 degrees Celsius.

As most of Guizhou was staggering in the freezing rain, authorities canceled all flights, more than 120, to and from the airport in the provincial capital of Guiyang,

As a spin-off of the shutdown of Guixin Expressway, one of the arteries in China's south, authorities in neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region said that as of late yesterday at least 1,500 vehicles headed to Guizhou had to line up about 15 kilometers on roads in Guangxi's Nandan County, stranding about 8,000 people in their vehicles. Local authorities were working to ensure the stranded get food, clothes and medication. But the county's publicity department told Xinhua news agency that "it's difficult to meet the needs" given the huge number of stranded people involved.

Temperatures in Nandan yesterday hovered around zero to 3 degrees Celsius.

Transportation authorities in Guizhou have initiated an emergency response, dispatching 545 emergency vehicles and 4,200 personnel since Saturday afternoon to save people from the freezing rain. Rescuers are trying to evacuate the trapped passengers and drivers to nearby villages, service stations and the office buildings of the province's transportation department, said Chen Mengren, director of the department.

The local civil affairs department has delivered food, 550 quilts, 800 coats and 4,000 bottles of water to the relief sites set up along the closed highways.

Guizhou's transportation department said the highway was unlikely to open until later today and the transportation conditions over the next few days will not be good as more cold fronts are forecast to hit the province from Wednesday.

The highway closure in Guizhou also incurred traffic jams in neighboring Hunan Province, trapping more than 6,000 passengers on a highway leading to Guizhou. As of 8pm last night, most of the stranded passengers had been relocated to nearby Xinhuang County.

Snow and freezing rain have also hit Hunan Province. But meteorological authorities said the possibility of the province suffering from harsh conditions similar to those in the winter of 2008 is small.

A cold front will continue to sweep across northwestern China today, bringing temperature drops and strong winds, weathermen said.

Temperatures will fall 6 to 8 degrees in northwestern China and eastern parts of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, with some parts seeing a drop of more than 10 degrees.

The cold front is forecast to move eastward tomorrow.