Big trees are uprooted by gusts and storms on the Tsinghua University campus on May 30, 2024. Photo: IC

Residents in Beijing unexpectedly weather the four seasons within a single day on Thursday when the scorching early summer morning suddenly changed into a gusty hailstorm afternoon in the Chinese capital city. 

The intense summer sun was baking the ground of Beijing on Thursday morning, when three alerts for extreme weather conditions including hail, wind and lightening were suddenly issued by the Beijing Meteorological Service soon after noon. 

According to the Beijing Meteorological Service, the gale gusted through the majority part of the capital city, with the strongest wind sweeping through the Qianling Mountain in Fengtai district at a speed of 37.2 meters per second. 

The gust was so powerful that a slew of trees and wire poles were blown down. 

Due to the impact of the strong wind and the hailstorm, the local traffic police department dealt with 185 cases of slumped trees that affected the local traffic as of Thursday evening. 

The administrative office of the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park issued a notice on Thursday evening that a slew of trees in the park fell down and blocked several major roads in the park so that the park had to close for cleaning on the following day and will be open again on Saturday. 

Students from Tsinghua University posted photos of uprooted trees and damaged roads at the century-old prestigious university on their WeChat account. 

Meanwhile, many netizens posted on social media platforms the photos of vehicles parked on the roadside being damaged by falling trees or wire poles. 

A video posted on China’s X-like platform Sina Weibo shows that even an autorickshaw was blown by the gale to fall down, with the elderly driver inside being thrown out of the vehicle. 

Zhang Mingying, a Beijing-based meteorologist, said a weak cold air arrived in Beijing on Thursday and it met with the heat on the ground to cause the strong convective weather in Beijing. The strong convective weather accompanying with gales was not a rare or abnormal phenomenon and it happens from time to time in summer. 

According to Lei Lei, chief weather forecaster from the Beijing Meteorological Service, monitoring showed that convective clouds appeared in the Zhangjiakou, North China’s Hebei Province, the upstream area of Beijing around Thursday noon, which was closely monitored by the city’s meteorological service. The convective clouds arrived in the mountain areas in the northwestern part of Beijing around 1:30 pm and swiftly developed into a gusty and stormy weather condition that further swept through the downtown city. 

The three alerts for extreme weather conditions had all been removed as of 7:30 pm on Thursday evening and the latest weather forecast shows that Beijing is expected to be sunny and cloudy on Friday and Saturday with the temperature highs maintain between 29 C and 32 C. 

Global Times