Widespread rain and dense fog hit north China's Shanxi Province on Sunday, reducing visibility to under 500 meters in many areas and less than 100 meters locally, prompting local authorities to impose temporary traffic controls on several expressways for safety.
Starting Sunday afternoon, rainfall blanketed parts of the province, causing thick fog along sections including the Yanmenguan section of the Erenhot-Guangzhou Expressway, the Pingyang section of the Beijing-Kunming Expressway, and the Zuoli section of the Tianzhen-Licheng Expressway. Visibility dropped below 500 meters, with some mountainous routes experiencing extremely poor conditions.
Expressway traffic police intensified patrols and used vehicle-mounted megaphones to warn drivers to proceed with caution.
Rain, dense fog trigger temporary traffic controls in north China
The rare footage of a family of three snow leopards, including a cub playing with a stick, was released recently after being captured by infrared cameras at the Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The footage shows the three snow leopards briefly appeared together on a rocky hillside before the male walked off into the distance. In another clip, the cub played with a stick, walking around and occasionally lying down, while the female watched nearby.
"The cub is now almost the same size as an adult leopard. It is nearly one and a half years old and has adapted very well to the Helan Mountain environment. It is growing up very healthily," said a staff member of the administration bureau of the Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve.
The snow leopard is a first-class nationally protected wild animal in China, and its survival is an important indicator of the health of high-altitude ecosystems.
To protect its habitat, the reserve has continued to track individual snow leopards through field patrols and infrared camera inspections, accumulating rich data for species protection and scientific research.
To date, five individual snow leopards have been monitored in the reserve.
Infrared cameras capture snow leopard family at nature reserve in Inner Mongolia
