Winter may have arrived slightly later than normal, but it has been making its presence felt. This week a fresh cold front is sweeping down from Siberia into China, bringing with it plummeting temperatures and heavy fog.

The cold front entered northwest China yesterday, and is continuing on a south-easterly path, promising snow and a temperature drop of 8 to 10 degrees, according to the Central Meteorological Office (CMO).

North China has already experienced heavy fog because of the front.

At Beijing Capital International Airport, at least 17 flights were cancelled and 60 delayed, airport authorities said.

"Fortunately the number of delayed flights is not likely to increase as we are starting to work through the backlog," an official told China Daily.

Twenty-one trains to Beijing on the Beijing-Guangzhou railway were also delayed on Sunday and yesterday, as visibility on the line dropped to just 3 meters in places, according to Beijing Railway Bureau.

All administrative staff at Beijing West Railway Station had to cancel their holiday and return to work to cope with the problem.

Road traffic in Beijing did not suffer too much during the New Year holiday thanks to a lower traffic volume, but several expressways linking Beijing and neighboring provinces were closed temporarily because of the fog.

Local meteorological stations in several provinces, including Hebei, Henan and Shandong, issued fog warnings yesterday.

The CMO predicted the heavy fog will vanish today as the cold temperatures arrive.

The CMO earlier predicted that this winter will be the coldest China has experienced in 20 years, as average temperatures in December were the lowest recorded since 1986.

(China Daily January 4, 2006)