Unusually early snow storms in north-central China have claimed 40 lives, caused thousands of buildings to collapse and destroyed almost 5 lakh acres of winter crops.

Nineteen of the deaths resulted from traffic accidents related to the storms that began on November 9.

Some of the snow was induced through cloud seeding. More than 7.5 million people have been stranded by the storms, which forced the evacuation of 1.58 lakh people.

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