China Grapples with Intense Winds and Weather Disruption

A pedestrian in Beijing used a scarf to protect herself from strong winds at the Olympic Park on Saturday. That day, many areas in northern China experienced windy and cooler weather.

Gale-force winds that had been affecting northern China moved into the southern parts of the country over the weekend. This caused widespread disruption and brought historically rare sandstorms to some regions. While the strong winds began to ease in some southern areas on Sunday, they were expected to continue causing problems in the north, according to the National Meteorological Center.

gales, snowstorms, sandstorms, torrential rain, and severe convective weather.

On Saturday, the winds continued to batter the north, causing damage such as fallen trees, damaged roofs, broken windows, and disrupted air travel. The winds also began to affect some southern regions. Meteorological monitoring showed that 493 national observation stations recorded historically high wind speeds for April. Hebei province alone accounted for 95 of those stations, with 61 more in neighboring Henan province.

Tianjin's Jizhou district reported winds between 41.5 and 46.1 m/s, exceeding its previous record set in 1951. In Beijing, winds reached up to 45.8 m/s on Saturday, uprooting more than 800 trees and damaging at least 30 cars by mid-afternoon. In Henan and Shanxi provinces, winds were strong enough to tear off roofs and shatter windows in some buildings. As of noon on Saturday, more than 3,200 domestic flights had been canceled, the highest daily total so far this year.

The winds moved quickly southward on Saturday, bringing gusts between 24.5 and 28.4 m/s to Hubei and Zhejiang provinces, as well as Shanghai. Meanwhile, sand and dust storms swept across the provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, causing PM10 particle levels to rise to dangerous levels.

According to Xin Xin, a senior analyst at Weather China, the extreme winds were the result of a clash between strong cold air and warm, humid airflow, combined with a high-altitude cold high-pressure system. Such systems can rapidly intensify in a short time, creating gale-force winds comparable in strength to a typhoon. The National Meteorological Center said the winds would begin to subside in the south starting on Sunday. However, many areas in the north, including Inner Mongolia, Hebei, and Beijing, were expected to remain under the influence of winds up to 30.5 m/s. At 6 am on Sunday, the national observatory issued an orange alert for strong winds across wide areas of northern China, effective through 8 am on Tuesday.