Southern China wilts under heat wave
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E-mail China Daily, August 1, 2013
Some workers in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, have been luckier than Guo. Several companies chose to give their workers days off.
Zhang Ping, a worker at Hangzhou Xihu Electronic Group, told Xinhua News Agency that most of his co-workers were given a 10-day leave from July 26 to Aug 4 because of the hot weather.
In Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, 1,460 air-conditioned shelters, or cooling centers, have been open since late June. Some stores see as many as 50,000 people pass through their doors on a daily basis.
But while people are taking their own measures to cool down, meteorological authorities are making efforts to induce rainfall and a little reprieve from the heat.
On Tuesday, seven cities and counties in Zhejiang seeded clouds and induced precipitation to combat a drought. Millions of hectares of farmland have wilted under a drought in Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou and Jiangxi provinces.
In Hangzhou’s Yuhang district, seven cloud-seeding rockets were launched on Tuesday afternoon to induce rain, resulting in an average of 5.4 millimeters of precipitation and a 10 C drop in temperatures between 3:30 pm and 5 pm, said Shi Feng at the Yuhang Metrological Bureau.
According to the Zhejiang Metrological Bureau, the province has been experiencing its hottest July in 62 years. From July 1 to 29, the average temperature was 30.3 C, while the average precipitation was only 38 mm.
The bureau also said in a statement that 12 cities and counties are preparing to seed clouds and create precipitation. Authorities said once they see clouds and ideal wind directions, cloud-seeding operations will be conducted as soon as possible.
