Beijing’s 22 million residents were asked to stay indoors on Saturday. The winds have knocked down trees, disrupted travel and sports, and caused sandstorms throughout the region.
According to Chinese province’s news media, the winds that reached 101 mph on Saturday afternoon local time in Beijing came from the Mongolia polar vortex, causing temperatures to skyrocket.
Wind and rain began colliding with the area on Friday. By Saturday afternoon, more than 800 trees had been knocked down and nearly 7,000 people had evacuated in Beijing, state media reported.
Overnight until Saturday morning, a sandstorm swirled across the north of the country, including Beijing, state broadcaster China Central Television said.
Jan Bobo, a graduate student studying funds in Beijing, said Friday night Gale “cries like ghosts, howls like wolves.” The wind removed the glass door at her school, she said, causing it to crash into the ground.
“I didn’t go out last night after cherishing my life,” Yang said via a text message on Saturday.
According to a video shared on Chinese social media platform Weibo, Winds rattled down a window in Beijing and damaged utility poles and windows in Henan Province, central China.
City officials in Beijing advised residents to avoid mandatory travel and postponed a scheduled soccer game over the weekend. City transport authorities suspended train and bus services on Friday and Saturday, with thousands of flights across the country cancelling on Saturday.
Tourist attractions such as banned cities, summer palaces and popular sections of the Great Wall have been closed. The marathon scheduled for Sunday in Beijing has been postponed until next week.
After a 80-degree line in the city, temperatures were forecast to reach only 57 Fahrenheit on Saturday. Strong winds have also been predicted in nearby Shanghai and Hebei provinces and China’s internal Mongolian regions, state news media reported.
South Korean and Japanese meteorologists issued strong wind warnings along the country’s west coast on Saturday. The winds there were related to the same weather system that was affecting China, said Woo Jin-ghi, a Korean Weather Bureau official.
