Beijing Snow!

[roddy]

Anyone else get a huge surprise when they opened their curtains this . . .ahem . . early afternoon? That's quite a lot of snow for Beijing, and seems to be quite a bit earlier than usual. Still coming down too, and the trees outside are already shaking it off.

Really recommend anyone with the time and inclination dresses up warm and heads to one of the larger tourist places - Summer Palace, Forbidden City, maybe the Old Summer Palace - you won't see them prettier than this and you can get some great photos.

And enjoy it while it lasts -won't take long to turn into gray slush . . .

[Meng Lelan]

Just got off a Skype call to someone in Beijing, she told me it snowed and I didn't believe it, so right on the webcam she opened the window and grabbed two whopping fistfuls of white snow for me to see right here in snowless Texas.

[anonymoose]

Glad to be in Shanghai. Can still go out with short sleeves.

Still, if anyone gets any nice pictures, post them here for us all to see.

[roddy]

Attaching a dodgy cameraphone pic out my window.

I hardly believed it myself - normally if it's going to snow all of Beijing spends the day beforehand telling each other it's going to snow soon, and the weather lately hasn't felt snowy - the temperature's been a bit lower, but not that low.

[cui ruide]

I knew it was supposed to snow, but I didn't expect it like this!

[roddy]

It's heavy enough to have brought down some branches off the trees - don't think I've seen that before in Beijing, normally it's the wind that gets 'em. It's not lying much, but where it is - tops of cars mostly - it seems to have been a good several inches.

Cui Ruide seems to live in a prettier bit of Beijing and have a nicer camera than me

[liuzhou]

Seems it was artificially induced.

'Beijing Weather Modification Office said they had used artificial means to increase the snow to ease the lingering drought.

"We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought," said Zhang Qiang, who is in charge of the office."'

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/01/content_12367931.htm

Still hot down here!

[Brian US]

I can't brag to my family in Michigan about how hot it is in Beijing. What, after a week of highs in the 20's?

[Kenny同志]

We are enjoying cool weather here in Hainan.

[Daan]

Yeah, I was just talking to a friend in Beijing on Skype and she was complaining about it being so cold there, since apparently their district heating had not been switched on yet. Poor Beijing. Come to Taiwan, the weather is better here ;)

[RuiXue]

My husband called home earlier, his parents lives in Suzhou and his mum told him it had been snowing in Beijing today! I didn't believe my ears since I keep an eye on the temperatures in various places through my iPhone weather service, and Beijing is one of the cities I keep an eye on out of interest since I went there in May. Incredible... Just a week or two ago it was still over 20 degrees in Beijing in daytime and now snow!

But we were earlier than that:twisted: The first snow came at home already on october 16th, and that was outside Gothenburg in Sweden, so pretty far south in Sweden. It was the earliest snow I've seen. October 17th has had snow once or twice in my lifetime before. But never earlier than that:-? Luckily the snow went away in the afternoon, and the 17th was a beautiful autumnday:D Perfect day to get married8)

[XiaoBin]

Yep BLCU started their heating already. I still have to wait a couple weeks...

[roddy]

Fear not, the government cares. 小区s have been instructed to turn the heating on now, or as soon as they can. Mine's started up, although it's not exactly scalding . . .

[anonymoose]

The relative warmth in the south more than compensates for the zh, ch, sh issue.

[RuiXue]

And don't forget z, c, s Those are just as difficult:lol: X is easy enough, like "sh" in another word not to be mentioned:lol:

Edited November 2, 2009 at 05:56 PM by RuiXue

[Hunininki]

I was flying into Beijing from Chongqing then, and I'd never seen snow before.

And I made a snowball in the airport.

Well. In between buildings.

But not something I was expecting.

[isela]

So jealous of you guys! Sigh... Texas is just not cool enough to have snow...

[isela]

Btw, has anybody heard the song "Snow" composed by Sir Edward Elgar?

It's really beautiful (I still consider it as THE best song I've ever heard), and you can listen to a version of it here:

[Daan]

That's beautiful! Thanks for sharing

[cui ruide]

Cui Ruide seems to live in a prettier bit of Beijing and have a nicer camera than me

The trade-off being my hutong hasn't even finished installing the government-subsidized heating units...much less turned on anything here. I haven't felt warm in days. Buying a portable heating unit tomorrow I think.