snow in shanghai

it has been raining and cold this week since i arrived from thailand, quite the contrast to the warm weather in back in bangkok. the temperature had been a few degrees above freezing with rain and strong wind every day making it a bit miserable to walk around outside. yesterday the temperature dipped slightly below freezing so the rain turned into snow.

apparently this is quite the event in shanghai, something which happens rarely. one of our office staff told me that the last time she remembers seeing snow here in shanghai was when she was nine, though it apparently did snow briefly last year.

our staff rushed to the windows to see the snow coming down and a few others went outside to walk around. i joined them to walk over to the bund but after walking about 500m i realized it was just too cold so i ducked over to nanjing donglu to take a few photos.


note to self: must remember to buy an umbrella... and some gloves... and a hat... and a warmer jacket!


in the evening i left the office and decided to walk nanjing donglu back towards my hotel. to my surprise i saw that the snow had actually accumulated and there was quite a lot of slush on the road. a couple of large paths had been cleared (by what, i wonder) for people to walk but between the paths it was very icy and i almost fell over once.

to think a week before i was reading a magazine by a pool!


the snow had accumulated on grass and trees, and this morning there was a photo in the shanghai daily newspaper of a child making a snowman a park.


it was absolutely freezing cold, the wind really biting into you. even so, haagen daaz was packed as usual.


there's an enormous neon thermometer on a building near my hotel. it was exactly zero degrees celcius when i took this photo.

definitely need to buy some warmer clothes!