Rescuers shovel snow to free a stranded car on the national highway G304 between Jarud Banner and Huolin Gol in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Wednesday morning. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - A strong cold snap swept across most parts of China on Wednesday, bringing widespread snowfall and dropping mid-December temperatures to their lowest in a decade.

The heavy snows disrupted roads and express highways in areas of Northeast China.

In Tongliao city of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, drivers and passengers in more than 400 vehicles were evacuated to service stations and towns on Wednesday morning after being stranded overnight on a national highway, according to the city's emergency management office.

Snow clogged a section of the national highway G304 between Jarud Banner and Huolin Gol on Tuesday. No injuries had been reported.

About 300 rescuers cleared the highway of up to 1.5 meters of deep snow and freed the vehicles later on Wednesday.

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In Northeast China's Liaoning province, some express highways were also shut down on Wednesday morning because of ice.

In neighboring Jilin province, low temperatures mixed with snow froze supplies of coal into massive chunks in the provincial capital of Changchun, forcing workers to hack it into usable pieces and affecting central heating services.

Snow was also reported in other areas of East and Central China, such as Shanghai, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.

The cold snap caused sea ice to form off the coast in the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea, according to the State Oceanic Administration, and the ice is expected to increase quickly.

The latest cold snap also sent temperatures below record lows.

In the northern part of the Greater Hinggan Mountains in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, the temperature was forecast to reach as low as -40 C on Wednesday night, according to the provincial meteorological observatory.

Beijing on Wednesday morning witnessed the lowest temperatures in mid December in the new millennium, with the mercury hitting -11 C.

The capital also has not seen any rainfall in the past 40 days, the observatory said. According to the forecast, snow will not fall in the city until Dec 22.