Environment     

Troublesome weather coming to an end

Shanghai Daily, January 6, 2012

• Snow and freezing weather that disrupted road traffic in southern parts of China on Wednesday will end over the weekend.

  An officer helps a driver set a fire to warm his truck's frozen fuel tank on an expressway in Guizhou province on Wednesday, as the temperature dropped to - 6 C. [China Daily]?

  "Temperatures will rise gradually, bringing rainfall to the central and southern parts of China before Jan 14," Ma Xuekuan, chief weather forecaster of the National Meteorological Center, told China Daily.

  The sudden snowstorms throughout the southern parts of China since Wednesday have caused many highways to freeze and meteorologists have warned people to drive slowly and asked transport departments to clear snow and ice off the roads.

  Two highways in Guizhou province and one in Hunan province have been closed since Wednesday due to the snowy weather.

  Guizhou issued an alert for meteorological disasters that may be triggered by the snowstorms on Wednesday.

  With China's Lunar New Year to come within three weeks, many passengers fear the bad weather may delay their schedules to go home for family reunions.

  Ma cleared their worries and said that in the coming 10 days, no dramatic drop in temperature is expected and the possibility of storms like the one in 2008 is slim.

  Despite Ma's positive forecast, long-distance buses to Guizhou were canceled in some bus stations in Guangdong province.

  According to the Dongguan Nancheng bus station in Guangdong, the price of a long-distance bus from Dongguan to Guangnan, Yunnan province, has risen to 530 yuan ($84), about 165 percent more than usual.

  Nearly 3 billion trips are expected during the coming Spring Festival travel season (from Jan 8 to Feb 16), about 71 million trips every day, a 9.5-percent growth over the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Transport.

  In early 2008, a series of storms hit the southern and central parts of China, causing power cuts and transportation chaos for millions of travelers.

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