China Daily/Reuters
Investigators inspected a port where ships are stuck in ice in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province, on Saturday.
BEIJING (AP) — China is experiencing unusually cold weather this winter, with the national average temperature hitting the lowest point in 28 years, and snow and ice leading to closed highways, canceled flights, stranded tourists and power failures in several provinces.
The China Meteorological Administration on Friday said the national average temperature had been 25 degrees Fahrenheit since late November, the coldest in nearly three decades.
The average temperature in northeast China dipped to 4.5 degrees, the coldest in 43 years, and dropped to a 42-year low of 18.7 degrees in northern China.
In some areas — northeastern China, eastern Inner Mongolia and the north part of the Xinjiang region in the far west — the low has hit minus 40 degrees, the meteorological agency said.
The state-run English-language newspaper China Daily reported Friday that about a thousand ships were stuck in ice in Laizhou Bay in the eastern Bohai Sea. The agency said Saturday that ice was covering 10,500 square miles of the sea’s surface. In Sichuan Province in southwest China, more than a thousand tourists were stranded Wednesday in a scenic mountainous area because of icy roads, the state-run Beijing News reported.
In southern China, snowstorms from Thursday night have disrupted air and road traffic.
The meteorological agency said the dropping temperatures were partly because of southward-moving polar cold fronts, caused by melting polar ice from global warming. It said the air was moist and was expected to lead to heavy snow in China, Europe and North America.
On Saturday, the forecast by the National Meteorological Center said that southern China would have more snow and rain in the coming days and that some regions could get icy rain.
Travel Disrupted in China Amid Unusually Cold Weather
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Travel Disrupted in China Amid Unusually Cold Weather
