Tag: Cold and Cold Spells

China Earthquake: In Bitter Cold, a Struggle to Help Survivors

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Rescue workers strained to plow through eight-foot piles of frozen sludge, which blocked the entrances to destroyed villages. Emergency vehicles struggled to navigate icy, damaged mountain roads. Victims with serious injuries were rushed to hospitals in cities, as demand for medical care overwhelmed the villages’ limited capacities. In the wake of China’s deadliest earthquake in nearly a decade, emergency workers raced to find survivors and distribute aid in Jishishan County in China’s northwest. They were running up against the challenges of rescue work in bitter cold in a remote part…

China Braces for Cold Wave After Snow Causes Train Crash

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Temperatures across China are forecast to plunge this weekend, as parts of the country reel from widespread disruptions caused by wintry conditions and heavy rains, including a subway collision in Beijing that left hundreds of commuters hospitalized. The cold snap comes after an abnormally warm fall, when the country logged its warmest October in decades. The average high temperature in the capital plummeted to about 15 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 9 degrees Celsius) on Saturday after hovering at around 50 degrees last week. Across China, meteorologists issued low temperature and strong…

Polar Vortex Drives a Cold Snap in Asia

Chin@Strategy

Mohe, China’s northernmost city, recorded a temperature of minus 63.4 degrees Fahrenheit this week. That was the coldest in its recorded history, and cold enough to cause hypothermia within minutes in anyone who wasn’t dressed properly. “It has never been this cold,” Zhang Hong, 53, who runs a pancake shop in Mohe and has lived in the city for 30 years, said by phone on Friday. “It was so frosty outside,” she added. “The wind was so brisk that it felt as though it was shaving your nose and face.”…

Natural Gas Shortages Hit China as Temperatures Plunge

Chin@Strategy

For many people across China, a shortage of natural gas and alarmingly cold temperatures are making a difficult winter unbearable. For Li Yongqiang, they mean freezing nights without heat. “We dare not turn on the heat overnight — after using it for five or six hours, the gas stops again,” Mr. Li, a 45-year-old grocer, said by telephone from his home in northern China’s Hebei Province. “The gas shortage is really affecting our lives.” The lack of natural gas, which is used widely across China to heat homes and businesses,…