Extreme weather has played havoc with transport in a number of areas of China in the last couple of days.

From heavy snowfalls and powerful winds to suffocating sandstorms, travel has been badly hit.

Urumqi airport in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was forced to close and all flights in and out were cancelled on Tuesday.

As the unseasonal near blizzard conditions subsided in Urumqi, passengers were able to get on their way yesterday, a spokeswoman at the airport said.

A related Xinhua News Agency story reported that six flights operated by China Southern, from Urumqi to Aksu and Korla in Xinjiang, were cancelled on Tuesday, when the icy cold front swept down from Siberia, seriously affecting northern Xinjiang.

Sleet and snowstorms, accompanied by northwestly winds of force 5 to 8, struck vast swathes of the region and caused traffic chaos in major cities such as Tacheng and Ili.

Trains were also seriously affected, with the mainline between Urumqi and Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China's Gansu Province, closed from midnight on Tuesday and out of action for several hours.

With heavy winds expected to continue today, even though the snow has stopped falling in most areas, the train service between Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, and Korla in Xinjiang will remain closed today, the local rail authority in Urumqi announced.

"When the transport will be up and running again depends mainly on the weather," said an official named Chen with the Urumqi Railway Bureau.

Also hit by bad weather in the Xinjiang region was Korla and other cities in the Tarim Basin. There a severe sandstorm hit on Tuesday which did not blow out until yesterday.

A local telephone operator in Korla confirmed yesterday that the sandstorm has left many parts of the city covered with thick dust, and visibility remains poor.

Traffic on roads across the desert has been brought to either a crawl and in some places a standstill from drifting sand, she said.

As the strong cold current edged eastwards yesterday, many other northwest Chinese cities were falling foul of sandstorms, including Lanzhou and those in most areas of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

(China Daily April 10, 2003)