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Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Sandstorm to hit northern China as yellow alert issued across 10 provinces
Li Yan

Affected by cold air, sandstorms and high winds will sweep eastward across the north and northeast parts of China from Tuesday, likely to cause the most severe sandstorm weather to hit China in 2023, according to China's top meteorological authority which issued a third-level yellow sandstorm warning in more than 10 provinces.

China's National Meteorological Center warned on Tuesday morning that the weather will be sandy and dusty across Tuesday to Wednesday in the south part of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, as well as in the northeast part of China including Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Heibei, Beijing, Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin.

As the north part of Inner Mongolia will face strong sandstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday, Beijing will face the worst of dusty storms on Tuesday morning potentially impacting the morning commute across the capital.

As this latest sandstorm is the third and to date the largest one to hit the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, meteorological analyst Zhang Juan from the China Weather Network explained the increase in blowing sand and dust this year, saying that most of China's northern parts have seen little rainfall since March and there is no snow cover across Mongolia and China's northwest region due to higher temperatures.

"This means once the cold air arrives, sand is picked up in these regions and forms into sandstorms," Zhang said.

Besides the sandstorms in northern China, cold air will also cause the largest scale of strong convective weather in Southern China in this year as it travels southwards. From Tuesday to Thursday, East China's Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian provinces and South China's Guangdong may suffer from heavy rain, high winds, thunderstorms and hail.

ECNS.cn
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