North to suffer severe drought in spring

The country's northern regions will very likely suffer severe drought in the coming spring, meteorologists forecast yesterday.

"Average precipitation in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces and the eastern Inner Mongolia autonomous region in January and February was only 1.8 mm, down by 80 percent on the average and the lowest since 1951," China Meteorological Administration (CMA) spokeswoman Jiao Yumei said.

In the first two months, Beijing received only 0.1 mm of rainfall, the second lowest in history, figures from the CMA showed. The average precipitation during the period is usually about 10 mm.