Bad weather forecast for many parts of China amid Spring Festival

For many Chinese people who are celebrating the Spring Festival holiday with family, the weather is undesirable in the coming three days as many parts of the country are forecast to have rain, snow, drop in temperature or smog.

A cold front swept eastward from West China from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning, bringing rain, snow and drop in temperature to central and eastern parts of China, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) said on Thursday.

There was an average temperature drop between six and eight degrees Celsius in central and eastern parts of China, with some areas dropping as much as 10 degrees Celsius, the NMC said.

In North China, parts of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces were hit by snow or sleet. In South China, parts of Hunan Province and Guangxi were hit by heavy rain or rainstorm.

The NMC said the cold front will move eastward further and central and eastern China will have more rain in the coming three days. In particular, some areas in Hunan, Jiangxi, Hubei and Guangxi will see heavy rain or even rainstorms.

Snow or sleet is expected in many parts of North and Northeast China, and some areas in Northeast China is likely to hit by heavy snow or even blizzard, according to the NMC.

The Center also forecast static weather for Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province as well as regions along the Yellow and Huaihe rivers, which is not conducive to the spread of pollutants and degradation. Under such weather, some areas would be unsuitable or extremely unsuitable for burning of firecrackers and fireworks, it said.

The Spring Festival is China's most important annual event for family reunions. Chinese people traditionally set off firecrackers to celebrate the Spring Festival, especially on Lunar New Year's eve, which is on Feb. 18 this year.

In Beijing for instance, the fireworks had already made the smog worse. The municipal environment bureau said on Thursday that pollutants rapidly increased from 8 p.m. on New Year's eve sufficiently to cause "heavy pollution" at midnight.

Some 83,000 boxes of fireworks were sold in Beijing on Wednesday, a decrease of 34 percent, and more than 10,000 boxes of illegal fireworks were confiscated.