(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-23 10:03

The snow also damaged 1,110 hectare of crops and killed more than 5,100 poultries and livestock. The total direct economic loss was reported to be 68 million yuan (about 9.4 million USD).

The snowfall topped the records since 1957, said Du Jiwen on Tuesday, deputy director of Shaanxi Provincial Meteorology Bureau. He said the snow will continue to 30th of this month.

The Emergency Management Office of the State Council, the Cabinet, issued a notice on Monday, asking all localities to pay high attention to the effects of the snow and rain.

Premier Wen Jiabao has ordered the governments to help the people in a practical and effective way, said the notice.

Local governments were also ordered to strengthen meteorological monitoring and to release details to the public in time.

The snowy and freezing weather has affected most of southern China for more than a week, making their temperatures in the same period down by two to three degrees Celsius than normal years, according to meteorologists.

"There had been no such bad weather ever since central Hunan had expressways," said Gong Xiao, an expressway administration official who was spreading salt to avoid icing on a bridge.

Eight expressways in Hunan were closed on Tuesday, stranding nearly 1,000 vehicles and more than 2,200 passengers in different sections, according to the provincial expressway administration bureau.

The bureau said it had dispatched thousands of workers to spread salt on expressways, provide food and medicine for stranded passengers.

In Sichuan, continuous snowfall led to a 3-centimeter ice coverage on the runway of an airport in the Jiuzhaigou scenic spot. The airport was shut down on Saturday.

Ma Zhenfeng, the Sichuan Climate Center director, said the continuous precipitation had resulted in the current temperatures two to three degrees lower than normal years.

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