Although Lan Haifeng, a farmer in Hegang, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, received messages from his village's WeChat group warning that heavy snow would arrive the following day, he still didn't manage to save his vegetables in six greenhouses.

On Nov 7, when the storm arrived in Hegang's Yongxin village, Lan and his parents cleared snow until around 8 pm. At around 3 am the following morning, they got up in response to the heavy snow only to find that their greenhouses had been overwhelmed and broken by the blizzard.

"I acted too late. The village committee informed me about the snow on WeChat. I didn't expect such a heavy fall, so I didn't prepare my greenhouses for such a large amount," Lan said.

"Snow was partly to blame but my own carelessness was also responsible for the loss. I had planned to cultivate seedlings in the greenhouses for next year's planting season, but they were all ruined."

He applied for a natural disaster subsidy from the local government, but is still awaiting a reply. Lan conceded that should he have bought agricultural insurance so he would be compensated for his loss, but he failed to do so.

"Most small farmers in my village are unwilling to buy insurance costing several thousand yuan a year, because it would account for most of their income. We don't think it is needed because snowfalls that heavy don't occur often," he said.

From Nov 4 to 9, a wave of cold air swept across about 1 million square kilometers of China, about 10 percent of the country's land area, causing temperatures to drop by more than 16 C, to far below freezing.

The National Climate Center ranked the cold air wave as the fourth most extreme on record, and in some parts of Northeast China the snow was 40 centimeters deep.

By Nov 8, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, one of the hardest-hit cities, had seen hundreds of greenhouses and livestock shelters damaged by snow. That resulted in losses of more than 30 million yuan ($4.7 million), the local emergency response department said.

Targeted information
Wang Jiahe, director of the warning engineering department at the National Early Warning Information Center, said her team is working to devise more accurate and targeted weather warning services to help farmers.

She noted that although Lan, the farmer in Heilongjiang, had received information about the coming snowfall from the village committee, that did not mean he knew how and when to prepare for, and then clear, the downfall.

"Farmers lack a service that combines the weather and agricultural advice. They can get information on ordinary smartphone apps used by most people, which only provide weather information about things such as suitable clothing to wear and transportation conditions," she said.

"Farmers can't fully take advantage of weather forecasts without specific suggestions related to agriculture."

In May, the center started a weather service on an agricultural app widely used by people who drive farming machinery, such as tractors and harvesters.

Chen Yang, a senior engineer with the center, said most of the drivers need to measure the farmland they cover to report their workload to their employers, and the app is more efficient than manual measuring tools.

"We included the service in the app because such drivers like to use and consult it every now and then. They can see weather information and agricultural notices at the same time," Chen said.

"Before, we thought of sending a link to weather forecasts through phone messages or including the service in widely used apps, including WeChat. But they don't target agricultural users on a large scale."

Through the app, the service covers about 1.5 million drivers and their dispatchers in 13 provinces, including Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang and Anhui.
It provides up-to-date weather forecasts every morning, afternoon and at dusk, with suggestions on the suitability of current conditions for harvesting crops, Chen said.

Weather conditions are rated on three levels: suitable for farming; moderately suitable; and unsuitable. The standards were formulated by the center and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Work schedule
Wen Chao, a farmer from Heihe, Heilongjiang, uses the app to work out when to harvest his crops, having learned about it on Douyin, a short-video platform.

The 36-year-old plans his workload based on weather forecasts and suggestions on the app.

"For example, if it is forecast to snow in three days' time, I will work faster. When the snow reaches a depth of more than 20 cm, it is hard to drive my machine onto farmland. Also, we need to rent more harvesting machines from neighboring areas, including Inner Mongolia and Hebei," he said.

He added that sometimes he and his colleagues are unable to prevent agricultural losses caused by extreme weather events that come ahead of the harvest season, but they can at least protect as many crops as possible.

Wang, from the National Early Warning Information Center, said her work group has a lot of room for improvement in the field of agricultural weather services. In addition to their own app, the team is seeking to cooperate with more agriculture-based apps and refine their services to assist farmers across a wide range of factors, she added.

"For example, along with the agricultural authorities, we plan to add a soil condition notice to our service because in some places once the soil has been dampened by a certain amount of rain, it causes problems for farming machinery. That was one of the demands made by farmers in Hebei when we conducted a survey there," she said.

"We also did a survey about the app. The responses showed that the majority agreed that our work is useful, which has encouraged us to develop more services for farmers."