Eleven highways in north China were closed early Monday, as overnight snow became heavier, according to the Ministry of Transport.

A local resident walks with her dog beside snow-coated cars in Beijing, March 8, 2010. Snowfall began hitting the Chinese capital Sunday night and is continuing to fall Monday morning. [Xinhua]

Guo Hu, director of the Beijing Meteorological Station, said the urban area of Beijing had received 4.2 millimeters of snow Monday. The snow is expected to stop in the evening.

The station issued an icy road warning early Monday. The city government also sent text messages warning the public of the snow and the cold snap.

A spokesman with the Capital International Airport said 49 flights had been canceled and 28 others delayed because of the snow.

He said snow on three runways had been cleared, but some aircraft had been covered by snow and frost, which caused many of the delays.

The snow came two days after "Jingzhe" in the Chinese astronomical calendar, which fell Saturday, marking the start of spring.

Guo said spring snow was uncommon, but not abnormal.

He said meteorological records showed Beijing's final snowfall could come between the middle of March and the middle of May.

He said the cold snap would linger till Wednesday, when the daily high temperature would increase from below freezing to 5 degrees Celsius.

Snow began to fall in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region late Saturday following a day of rain. Roads in the regional capital of Hohhot were covered by 3 to 4 cm of snow.

A highway pile-up involving 13 vehicles occurred during snowfall in Erdos City Sunday. One person was confirmed dead, according to police.

"The weather was weird. It had been raining for the last two days. Now we have surprisingly heavy snow," said Cao Jianmin, a Hohhot resident.

The station said the snowfall had worsened conditions in Inner Mongolia's Hexigten Banner, 650 km north of Beijing, where snow lay 20 to 25 cm deep Monday, while the daily low temperature dipped to minus 22 degrees Celsius.

The regional government had allocated 10 million yuan (1.4 million U.S. dollars) of emergency relief funds to the banner.

The regional civil affairs bureau said it had received no casualty reports.

Li Youwen, an expert with the Inner Mongolia Biology and Agriculture Weather Center, said the spring snow was expected to ease a winter drought in the region's farmland and grassland areas. But the moisture would postpone spring sowing in the Hetao Plain, a major grain production base in north China.