Beijing May Get Its First Snow Exactly on Lidong, the Traditional Start of Winter
Forecasters say rain and snow will sweep the capital around November 7 — the day of Lidong, the solar calendar's official start of winter. Weibo is delighted at the timing, and grateful for a forecast from an official system after Apple's app told half of China it would hit minus 32.
Beijing's meteorological bureau has a date circled on the calendar: November 7, the day of Lidong — the traditional "start of winter" in China's solar calendar — may also bring the capital its first snow of the season. According to the bureau's Wednesday forecast, a band of rain and snow will move through the region around that day, with the snow concentrated in the capital's western and northern districts (as People's Daily announced to its tens of millions of followers). State television's weather desk had flagged the same system a day earlier, warning of a pronounced wintry spell across northern China (as CCTV News reported).
The timing is what set Weibo alight. Lidong, the nineteenth of the twenty-four solar terms that structure the traditional Chinese year, is less a weather forecast than a cultural appointment: the day the calendar says winter begins, marked for centuries with nourishing stews, dumplings, and the countryside putting itself to bed. A snowfall arriving on that very day is read as the season keeping its promise. People's Daily's announcement paired the forecast with archival photographs of the Forbidden City under snow — a scene so beloved that state media routinely saves it for moments like this.
The excitement is also a matter of scarcity. Beijing's snowfalls are famously fickle — some winters pass with barely a flurry inside the city — so a forecast that lands on Lidong itself feels like a gift. The neighboring province of Hebei issued its own advisory for weekend rain and snow in the north, with frost expected to push temperatures down several degrees before the weekend (as Hebei Weather warned), and fire departments across the region used the moment to publish the season's first home-heating safety notices.
The forecast also arrives with a dent in the public's trust. Just this week Apple's weather application told half of China that temperatures would plunge to minus 32 degrees Celsius next week, a glitch the national weather bureau had to publicly debunk — as this site covered on Tuesday. The official forecast for Lidong, issued on the state system rather than a phone app, is being received as the trustworthy version.
Whether the flakes actually arrive on cue is, as ever with Beijing snow, an open question. The bureau hedged, as forecasters do, but Weibo had already moved on to what matters: which park looks best white, and whether dumplings should be eaten before or after the snow starts.