Something in the air
A sandstorm (above) closes in on Zhangye, Gansu province, on Sunday. On Monday night and Tuesday, sandstorms were to arrive in areas to the east that also have seen heavy smog.
The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster is expected to be blanketed by airborne dust and sand late Monday night and Tuesday from sandstorms sweeping across Northwest China.
In addition to most parts of Gansu province, some areas in the Xinjiang Uygur and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions, along with Shaanxi province, were affected from Sunday night to Monday, according to the China National Environmental Monitoring Center.
An Linchang, an engineer at the National Meteorological Center, said sand and dust was expected to arrive in Beijing on Monday night and the dusty air may linger in the capital through Tuesday.
The unhealthy air conditions may last even longer in areas south of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster, he said.
The weather event may result in airborne particulate matter, including PM 2.5 and PM 10, in the capital, and people are advised to wear masks to reduce potential health hazards, An added.
The sandstorm raised the PM 10 density to up to 4,000 micrograms per cubic meter on Sunday afternoon in Zhangye, Gansu province, the National Meteorological Center reported.
Videos and photos shared with China Daily showed a huge airborne wall of dust and sand slowly approaching Zhangye, dwarfing nearby buildings.
“Seldom have I seen such severe sandstorms in recent years,” said Bai Ping, 38, a Zhangye resident.
“Suddenly, I felt the air quality plummet, and I could sense soil in my nose and mouth,” said Wei Qinxia, a resident of the Gansu provincial capital of Lanzhou, as the cold air arrived in her city on Monday.
The current smog in the cluster is also combined with heavy fog. On Monday, the cluster — along with Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces — were engulfed by fog that reduced visibility in some areas to less than 50 meters, according to the National Meteorological Center.
On Monday, the center renewed an orange — the second-highest — alert for thick fog in some northern, eastern and southwestern regions in the country.
In Beijing, eight highways were closed Monday morning due to low visibility caused by heavy fog and smog, according to the Beijing traffic control department.
The cold air should gradually clear up the fog and smog from north to south in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster. Thick fog, however, will linger in Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Zhejiang provinces until Sunday as the cold blast is too weak to clean up these areas quickly, said Ma Xuekuan, a chief forecaster with the center.