Shanghai records lowest temperature in 40 years

China’s financial hub Shanghai is set to record its chilliest period in December in four decades.

The city’s lowest temperatures on Thursday (Dec 21) was minus 4 to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 to 24 degrees Fahrenheit) in Shanghai's suburbs, and temperatures remained below zero all day throughout the city.

The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau said this in a post on its Weibo social media account.

Wang Kaiyun, 59, who works as a cleaner in downtown Shanghai and commutes from the city's suburbs on an electric scooter, said the temperature was minus 5 C on her one-hour ride in on Thursday.

“Even though I was wearing gloves, I quickly lost feeling in my hands and they are still painful now,” Wang said.

The unusually frigid weather ushered in by a powerful wave of cold air from Siberia has spread across China since the middle of last week, with many northern provinces rewriting December records as the mercury sank as low as minus 30 C in some cities.