Since last Saturday, Shanghai has been gripped in the icy cold embrace of a winter snow storm, taxing power grids, crippling transportation, causing schools to take "snow days" and generally prompting many local residents and expats alike to wonder, "just when was the last time it snowed so much in Shanghai"?

Snow began to fall last Saturday morning. It continued throughout the day and into late Sunday but with little accumulation. Despite the "blizzard", flights out of Hongqiao on Monday were not canceled but instead heavily delayed. A China Eastern flight scheduled to depart from Hongqiao to Guangzhou boarded on time at 9:30am, only to sit on the tarmac for 15 hours. To no one's surprise, Shanghai police reported fighting breaking out among passengers and crew.

To some, however, it appeared as if Shanghai were blessed with a rare and idyllic winter gift. After temperatures rose Sunday then dropped overnight, snowmen, which for a city unprepared or experienced in such harmless affairs, began to dot the city streets early Monday morning. On Tuesday morning, a city wide SMS alert was sent out by the municipal government informing children that school was canceled all day Tuesday.

On a darker note, Shanghai city hospitals have reported 24 related deaths due to the blizzard with thousands more struggling to stay warm in the sub freezing temperatures.

How long since Shanghai experienced such extensive snowfall lingered on many minds throughout the week. Answers range widely, with some insisting that it hadn't snowed this much for twenty five years. Older Shanghai residents claim that as many as half a century had passed since a storm of this magnitude descended on the city. Shanghai Daily also provided a similar figure claiming that, "Shanghai was hit by the city's heaviest snowfall in about 50 years on Monday". Government reports were lacking at the time.

Snow is expected to continue to fall throughout the week stoking fears travel in and out of Shanghai during Chinese New Year will be severely frustrated.

POST SCRIPT This just came in from our Shanghai Editor, Ella Li. "According to the local weather bureau, this snow storm started on Friday, January 25. The amount of the snow is more than a large storm on January 17-18, 1984, which was 46.7mm, but also is the biggest since the foundation of the PRC.

The average depth of the snow in the downtown area reached 4cm, which is the deepest since 1991. This blizzard lasted longer than any other since 1964, when there was a storm during February 17-24 lasting 8 days. The accumulated amount of the snow was 14cm.

According to the Min Fang Bureau (a bureau in charge of all info related to natural disasters), there were no direct casualties due to the blizzard. But it said that the loss of property caused by the storm is worse than Matsa, the typhoon in the summer of 2007."