At least 2,000 passengers were stranded and eight trains held at two stations in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as hurricane-force winds of up to 170 kilometers per hour swept through the region on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"We'll wait until the wind trails off and visibility improves," said a spokesman at the railway station in the provincial capital, Urumqi.

The Urumqi railway station has canceled four trains, including one to Xi'an in the northwestern Shaanxi Province and three to other parts of the region amid fears that trains might be derailed in high winds in the Gobi desert.

This has posed a problem for many vacationers who are eager to get back to work after the May Day holiday, which concluded on Tuesday.

The railway station in Hami, a city in eastern Xinjiang, has also delayed four trains bound for Urumqi.

High winds have been battering Hami for five days, and the local meteorological station said winds would probably not ease up until Wednesday night or early on Thursday.

The local civil affairs department said no deaths or injuries had been reported as yet because the affected areas are sparsely populated and have few communication links.

In the cities the weather has been less disastrous, but Urumqi suffered heavy rains on Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, the temperature in the southern suburbs of Urumqi dropped to minus two degrees Celsius, compared with 15 degrees over the weekend. The winds measured 38 kilometers per hour.

Hurricane-force winds derailed 11 carriages of a train in Xinjiang on Feb. 28, killing three passengers and injuring 34 others.

Yesterday, a top meteorological official warned that China is at more risk of being hit by typhoons, floods and drought this year than at any time in the last decade because of climate change.

"The situation is urgent. Temperatures in most areas will be higher this year than in previous years, and typhoons are expected to arrive in larger numbers than last year," said Zheng Guoguang, director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), at yesterday's working conference on weather forecasting.
 
Heavy rainfall could hit the south, centering on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, as well as the north, affecting most of the central part of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, he said.

Global climate change is the major cause of the increasing probability of such disasters, he added.

Zheng's words echoed those of E Jingping, vice-minister of water resources, who said last month that the Yangtze River was at risk for major flooding, and that the Yellow River, which flows through the central part of Inner Mongolia, could also burst its banks this year even though its water level had declined several times during the last several decades.

Bad weather this year has already caused damage, Xu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the CMA, told China Daily. An unexpected cold snap last month caused serious losses in Shaanxi, Hunan, and Hebei provinces.

Meteorologists are doing what they can to prepare for inclement weather.

"We are expected to issue warnings about potentially disastrous weather," said Xu.

Experts at the CMA have traveled around the country making sure satellites, radars, lightening positioning systems and other facilities are in the right places, he added.

In addition, one volunteer at each village in Jiangxi Province, located along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, has been charged with monitoring signs of natural disasters and is to report his or her findings to local meteorological authorities.

Starting on June 1, the FY-2 meteorological satellite will double its current speed, sending back photos indicating weather changes every 15 minutes, Xu said.

Meanwhile, the water level in the Three Gorges reservoir has been lowered to 147.51 meters.

"We are confident of being able to meet the challenge of a big flood," Cao Guangjing, vice-general manager of the China Three Gorges Project Corporation, told the Xinhua News Agency on Monday.

"The Three Gorges reservoir can play a role in fighting against floods," he said.

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, May 10, 2007)