A worker shovels a path on the basketball court in Beijing on January 4, 2010.

A new cold front is coming from the north of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and it will keep most parts of China in a freeze this weekend, the Central Meteorological Station (CMS) said Thursday.

Forecasters said that northern areas of China including Beijing, Tianjin, parts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and north of Hebei Province will see light to moderate snow today. But the snowfall will not sustain.

Some parts of Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan and Hubei provinces will be greeted by heavy snow, CMS chief forecaster Sun Jun said.

"The previous cold spell brought the temperature to a rather low level, but the new one may not come with a sharp drop in temperatures, with the northern parts of China expecting a drop of 10 to 12 C and the south expecting a drop of 6 to 8 C," Sun added.

In another development, Zheng Guoguang, chief of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said more advanced meteorological services should be in place this year. He made the statement at the annual national conference for meteorological bureau directors Thursday.

According to the report discussed at the conference, more than 1,200 people died from weather disasters in China in 2009, the fewest in the past 20 years; and 85.6 percent of the public was satisfied with weather forecast services.

"The forecast said it would snow during the new-year holiday three days in advance and it really snowed; thanks to the weather forecast, I prepared enough food and didn't need to go out in the heavy snow," said Huang Hanqing, a retiree in Beijing.

But some residents are not satisfied with the forecasts.

"Sometimes there weren't any rain drops although the forecast said that it would rain," said Shang Guan, a Beijing resident.

The State Council publicized a special emergency plan for weather disasters last month, which covers warning of weather disasters, emergency responses, and rebuilding.

The snow at the beginning of the New Year brought havoc on the transport system in China, clogging 30 national highways and stranding thousands for 48 hours and 1,400 rail passengers in Inner Mongolia.

More than 400 people in 50 vehicles were stranded for more than a day on a highway in Xinjiang due to heavy snow, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

"Large areas of snow were not cleared on the streets; it's really a tough job for me to go to work. I nearly fell over several times," Wang Nan, a media worker in Beijing, complained.