Temperatures plunge in northwest China

World Today

The cold spell continues in the north and northwest of China, with temperatures plunging, traffic disrupted and accidents reported. CCTV America’s Wu Haojun reported this story on how the region is coping with the cold. 

The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China has seen temperatures nose dive by 22 degrees Celsius in less than 48 hours. With arctic gales triggering sandstorms, visibility has gone below 50 meters in some areas. Police were called in overnight to rescue sheep scattered by the gales. In neighboring Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, workers of a local forest farm were trapped.

“There has been continuous snow fall for the past two nights. We had no signal in our phones and the snow piled up to my waist,” a worker said.

In other sections of the road, avalanches trapped dozens of vehicles. “The road is too slippery. We’ve spent two and a half days stuck here,” a trapped driver from Xinyuan county said.

Local police spent 10 hours clearing up snow on the road, which has reached a depth of 50 centimeters. In Changchun, the capital city of Jilin province in northeast China, the first snow of the season brought more reports of traffic accidents.

A three-car pileup was reported on Monday, with two of the cars thrown off the highway. A driver was trapped for hours. Local police said, it was just one of the latest among over 1000 accidents in two days. The good news though is that the cold front blowing across the country has most likely reached its peak.