A cold front is expected to bring strong wind and snow to northern China and rain to the south in the next two days, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) announced on Saturday.

The northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Inner Mongolia, as well as southwestern Tibet and the Sichuan Province are expected to get between 5-10 millimeters of snow Saturday night and Sunday, according to the NMC forecast.

Temperatures are also supposed to drop 4-10 degrees Celsius.

The national weather forecast also predicted rain for most of southern China over the weekend. Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region will see large amounts of rain on December 28.

Fog and haze will cover southwestern Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces as well as Chongqing municipality from Saturday night to Sunday morning.

NMC warned drivers to mind traffic as visibility in some of these regions could be less than 200 meters.

(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2008)