Mid-week snow affects roads

By Lan Tian (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-20 07:38

Beijing's first snow this year finally stopped yesterday after causing some minor inconveniences for the city's residents.

From Monday evening to yesterday, an average of 4.5 mm of snow per day with a maximum of 7 mm had fallen on the city, Duan Li, chief weatherwoman of the Beijing meteorological bureau, told China Daily yesterday.

The bureau yesterday predicted it would be sunny to cloudy with no rain or snow today and tomorrow.

On Feb 12, the capital received its first rain in 110 days, but that was too little to provide fundamental relief to the parched city.

Duan expects that Beijing will receive a weak cold front next Monday, which may bring rainfall to the city again.

The snow brought much-needed moisture, but also caused inconvenience for traffic and citizens' daily life.

"On my way to work today, I slipped on the icy sidewalk four times. Luckily, I'm not injured," said Li Bo, an accountant who works in Chaoyang district.

But many were not as lucky as Li. Beijing Jishuitan Hospital, a renowned hospital for orthopedics, on Wednesday received 42 patients who fell on slippery roads, four to five times as many as usual.

"Most of these patients are elderly people and children who broke bones of their hands or ankles when they fell," the hospital's attending doctor Guo Qi said.

Because of the snow, Beijing's traffic management bureau had to initiate its snow day contingency plans. Six expressways were closed, and 16 bus lines stopped operation. The subway system added extra trains during peak hours.

Though traffic was slower than usual, there were no severe traffic jams reported.

On Wednesday, the weather caused delay of more than 150 flights at Beijing Capital International Airport, but only four were delayed for more than two hours, local news website Qianlong.com reported yesterday.

Wang Xin of the Beijing municipal administration commission told China Daily: "From Feb 18 evening to Feb 19 morning, we had dispatched 6,432 personnel and 1,608 vehicles to remove the snow, and sprayed some 3,223 tons of snow-dissolving agents along major roads, in a drive to keep the traffic running smoothly."