Lucky snow chills roads and runways, rails survive
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The snow might have added holiday flavor to Sunday's Lantern Festival but it brought little more than burden to the city's rush hour traffic yesterday.
Snow on Lantern Festival is traditionally considered a sign of luck in China, an event that has only occurred 10 times in the last 59 years, the Mirror Evening News reported.
"When snow falls, it ends any worry that lanterns might catch fire accidentally," Duan Li, chief forecaster of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau said yesterday, adding that is also increases humidity and can clean the air.
Statistics from the Beijing municipal environmental protection bureau showed that 23 days in February were recognized in the city's Blue Sky Project, largely due to the numerous cold fronts and three snowfalls last month.
The light snow that arrived at 5 pm on Sunday and gradually stopped early yesterday morning was widespread across the city, Duan said.
She added that cold fronts are common in Beijing in early spring.
"Another should arrive on the 7th or 8th of this month, and the temperature will drop to -7 C," she told METRO on Monday.
With the falling snow, icy roads challenged the city's traffic system at peak times yesterday morning.
Sun Jiangang, a driver from Xinyue Taxi Company, said the traffic condition yesterday morning was poor as a result of snow-induced slippery roads.
"I drove from Fangzhuang to Tongzhou at 8:30 am yesterday. Usually, the distance only takes about one hour to make, but I needed one and a half hours," he complained.
Sun said the roads in the west and north areas of the city were very crowded before 10:30 am on Monday. "Icy roads are very dangerous for inexperienced drivers because they don't know when to hit the brakes," he said.
The Beijing subway company added 10 more trains Monday morning to ensure smooth services to rail users.
Jia Peng, from Beijing subway's press office, said they took immediate action after learning of the predicted snowfall.
He said in order to stop the rails from freezing, 11 empty trains ran the lines throughout the night and workers were dispatched to remove snow from subway rails.
Jin Lei, from the press office of the Beijing Capital International Airport, said yesterday that around 200 planes were delayed due to the snow, but runways had recovered by the afternoon.
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