Cold front brings snow to east coast

Cities in the Yangtze River Delta including Shanghai and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, experienced their first snow on Wednesday, brought by a strong cold front from the north.

As heavy snow continues to hit central and eastern China and the cold front continues to bring down temperatures in the region, the country's national observatory maintained a yellow snowstorm alert and a blue cold alert for Thursday. In the country's four-tier weather warning system, red is the most severe, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

The National Meteorological Center said it expected 5 to 12 centimeters of snow in parts of Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Hubei, Shaanxi and Zhejiang provinces. Blizzards are expected to drop new snow of up to 20 centimeters in some areas, it said.