Strong gusts trigger yellow alert

As a severe cold wave sweeps across China, the National Meteorological Center has issued a series of warnings, highlighting that the impact of strong winds, overshadowing the effects of snow and rain, is more pronounced compared to the previous cold wave.

The center renewed a yellow warning, the third severest in the four-tier warning system, for strong winds on Friday morning, forecasting gusts of up to 32 meters per second in several regions, including parts of Northeast China, North China and the Yellow River-Huaihe River region including provinces of Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shandong.

In Beijing, the wind intensity reached notable extremes from Thursday to Friday, with the maximum wind speed detected at a mountain observatory in Yanqing district reaching 40.2 meters per second, according to the municipal meteorological station.

Zhang Linna, chief forecaster at the Beijing meteorological station, said that this level of wind is unusual for early February as historical data show that the strongest gust recorded at the Beijing station was 21.9 meters per second on Feb 8, 1994.

She noted that this cold air event involves a very strong cold air mass rapidly moving southward from Siberia and its center passing just over the North China region, crossing directly over Beijing.

The meteorological center also renewed a blue alert for a cold wave on Friday morning, indicating that from Friday to Saturday, a cold wave is expected to chill China, causing temperature drops in parts of the northwest and northern regions, the Yellow River-Huaihe River region, most parts of the southern region, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Western Sichuan Plateau.

Zhu Dingzhen, a former chief expert at the China Meteorological Administration, said that the "wind chill effect" can be observed in some areas, where the perceived temperature is lower than the actual temperature due to rising winds.

Unlike the previous cold wave that brought snow and rain, this one featured strong winds, with less precipitation expected, Zhu said.

Southern China might see light rain or sleet, while northern areas could experience light to moderate snow, he added.