BEIJING: Freezing rain, snow and ice have snarled traffic in central, eastern and southern China as millions of people travel home ahead of the Spring Festival holiday in the blistering cold that has swept through parts of the country over the past week.

Southern Hunan and central Hubei provinces bore the brunt of the severe weather, which deteriorated over the weekend, slowing highway traffic to a crawl, cancelling hundreds of trains and delaying flights.

The disruptions coincide with the biggest mass travel migration in the world as people across the country flock home to see their families for the Chinese New Year holiday, which officially begins on Saturday.

Over the past few days, videos across Chinese social media showed images of people stranded on trains and trapped in cars on snowy highways in several cities, including Jingzhou in the south of Hubei.

One driver was trapped in a car for three days, media outlet Yicai reported, and passengers heading for Wuhan, to the east of Jingzhou, were stuck on a train for hours after power was lost amid freezing temperatures, social media videos showed.

“This weather in Wuhan can drive you crazy, you have to walk 20,000 steps every day to get to work, and then you get home and the power goes out because the wires are down,” one user complained on the social media platform Weibo.

Hundreds of trains were delayed or suspended, and throngs of passengers stranded at railway stations in Wuhan, local media said.

Runways at the Tianhe Airport in Wuhan were temporarily closed on Tuesday, state media CCTV reported.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2024