Beijing blanketed by snow after China seeds clouds to beat drought

(China Daily/Reuters)

People's Liberation Army soldiers sweep snow in front of the Forbidden City in Beijing

Jane Macartney in Beijing

A carpet of snow blanketing the Forbidden City and the ancient halls and courtyards of the Lama Temple has transformed China’s capital into a fairyland. Hundreds have played truant from offices to sneak a peak of the first snowfall of the winter.

But nature has been given a helping hand. The heavy snowfalls over Beijing have principally been induced by meteorological offices to try to mitigate the most severe drought to grip northern China in nearly half a century.

City officials have been blasting chemicals into clouds over northern China to create the first precipitation in more than 100 days. The first flurries fell on the capital on Tuesday. By Tuesday, more than 500 cigarette-sized sticks of silver iodide had been seeded into clouds above Beijing from 28 rocket-launch bases around the city, said the Beijing Weather Modification Command Centre.

But this was still nowhere near enough to alleviate the drought that is threatening wheat harvests in several northern provinces.

Since the Government calculated that the city had gone for more than 100 days without a drop of rain, residents have been complaining to one another about how the snowfalls that were a common occurrence even into the 1980s appeared to have halted, as drought and desertification have marched towards the city from the Gobi desert.

Making the most of the cloud cover and renewed scattered snow, officials decided to “enhance” the fall by artificial seeding again last night. They fired 313 more sticks of silver iodide into the sky. The procedure made the snow a lot heavier, officials said.

Guo Yingchun, a senior engineer with the Hebei provincial meteorological observatory, said: “The snow has brought moisture to the soil and that may end the drought.”

So heavy was the fall that officials closed 12 highways around Beijing yesterday. Residents got up early to sweep the carpet away from their front doors with bamboo brushes. Few are equipped with spades, since snow has become such a rarity in recent years. Road sweepers were drafted in to work overtime, pushing snow into piles against pavements and around trees.

The snowfall did, however, succeed in attracting visitors to the Forbidden City – the former palace of China’s emperors – that sprawls with its legendary 999 rooms across the heart of the capital.

The increasingly rare sight of Beijing’s ancient buildings blanketed in snow and with footsteps muffled always draws residents eager to capture the moment on their cameras. An administrative official at the Forbidden City said: “Tourists will come in any weather, no matter if it snows or rains - people come anyway.”

But many said they were visiting just for the pleasure of seeing the home of the emperors in the snow.

A spokesman for the Badaling section of the Great Wall, about an hour from Beijing, said twice as many tourists as usual had come out to view the snow-covered site. “Even though it wasn't the weekend, about 4,000 tourists still showed up yesterday to watch the snow ... the scene is spectacular,” he said.