People walk on a street during heavy snow in Beijing, China, Jan. 3, 2010. [Photo: Xinhua]
Heavy snow hit Beijing on Sunday to close expressways, delay flights and disrupt bus services.
The Beijing Traffic Management Bureau said that expressways linking Beijing to neighboring Hebei Province and Tianjin Municipality were closed due to snow and ice on the road surface, but the highway to the Beijing Capital International Airport remained open.
The airport management said that 15 outbound domestic flights had been canceled by 9 a.m., and many others were postponed. Passengers were advised to call in advance to check possible changes to their flights.
Snow was 4 centimeters deep in the airport on Sunday morning.
The traffic bureau also said that 60 bus routes in the city were affected by snow, including service suspension on 47 routes to rural areas.
"Luckily, we are still in the New Year holiday. More people could be affected tomorrow," said Liu Juan, a local resident, who went out to enjoy the snow view.
Zhang Zhiqiang, an official in charge of road cleaning in the Beijing Environment and Sanitation Engineering Group Co. Ltd., said 960 workers and 193 snow-clearing vehicles had been working for more than 12 hours to ensure traffic in the city's main roads.
He said 2,175 tons of snow-thawing agents had been used on roads.
It was the second snowfall in the three-day New Year holiday. The city's meteorological bureau upgraded the snowstorm alert from blue to yellow at 8:50 a.m. Sunday.
"The yellow alert means that the snowfall is going to turn heavier to above 6 millimeters in the next 12 hours," said Guo Hu, the bureau chief.
He said that the northern part of Beijing received the most snowfall, or 12.6 millimeters by Sunday morning. The average snowfall in the city proper reached 4.8 millimeters.
Guo said that Beijing embraced the earliest snow in 13 years this year. After the snowfall on Sunday, the temperature would plummet by 7 to 8 degrees to minus 16 degree Celsius in the next three days, which would be the lowest since 1980s.
China's Central Meteorological Station said on its website that snowstorms would affect northern areas including Beijing and Tianjin municipalities, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as well as Hebei and Shandong provinces on Sunday.
People walk on the snow-covered ground during a heavy snowfall at Daxing district in Beijing, China, Jan. 3, 2010. China's capital city Beijing was hit by the second snowfall in the three-day New Year holiday on Sunday morning, which was much heavier than the first one on Saturday. [Photo: Xinhua]
People clean the snow-covered vehicles during a heavy snowfall at Daxing district in Beijing, China, Jan. 3, 2010.[Photo: Xinhua]
