Strong Snowstorms Black Out Chinese Cities

Chenzhou, a city of 4.6 million people in southern China's Hunan Province, has had no electricity for nine days and limited municipal water, thanks to the fiercest winter storms in decades, the South China Morning Post reports.

Ice has brought down power lines and heavy snow has blocked trains that transport fuel, largely coal, burned in local power plants. Water supplies have also failed, forcing residents to rely on fire hydrants or melting snow to drink.

The storm has affected more than 100 million of China's 1 billion people in cities from Chenzhou to the more famous Shanghai. And they are not done yet. Fresh storms continue to dump snow on the region and are not expected to stop until midweek.

The storms cannot be directly attributed to climate change; Chinese meteorologists are blaming the natural La Nina weather pattern, according to Reuters. But the intensity is characteristic of what might occur in a world that continues to be blanketed in increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

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