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Heavy smog and fog continued to hit most parts of east and north China yesterday, disrupting traffic and forcing schools to close.
The National Meteorological Center renewed a yellow alert for fog and smog as dense air continued to choke eastern and northern provinces, including Shanghai’s neighboring provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, as well as Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi and Jiangxi.
The yellow alert is the third highest in China’s four-level alert system. Red is the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue.
With visibility reduced to less than 50 meters in places, many highways in eastern Jiangxi Province were closed yesterday morning with thousands of drivers stranded on the Changdong Highway in Nanchang, the provincial capital.
Classes were suspended in all middle and primary schools and kindergartens in Nanjing, Jiangsu’s capital, after the city government initiated an emergency response to serious air pollution, which triggered a red alert, on Wednesday evening. They will remain closed today.
Nanjing’s publicity department said the city’s air quality index had hit 484.
Air quality is “excellent” or “good” when the AQI is below 100, “lightly” or “moderately” polluted between 101 and 200, and “heavily” or “severely” polluted from 201 to 500.
In Zhejiang, smog drove the air quality in the cities of Shaoxing, Jiaxing and Jinhua to severely polluted levels, according to the provincial environmental protection department.
Heavy fog is forecast to extend to central Yunnan Province, southwest Sichuan Basin, eastern regions in Guizhou Province, eastern and northern Anhui, western and northern Fujian Province and most areas in Jiangsu, according to the meteorological center.
Visibility would be less than 500 meters in some areas.
The smog is expected to linger in central and eastern regions until Sunday, according to the center. The smog is the most severe this winter, said He Lifu, its chief meteorologist. It started to accumulate last weekend, and the center initially issued an alert on Monday evening.
The good news is that a cold front with gale-force winds is expected to sweep China on Sunday and blow the smog away. Temperatures will drop by 6 to 8 degrees Celsius.
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