China's air force has boosted the volume of rain and snow in four of country's driest provinces to alleviate drought, an official with Shandong provincial government said Thursday.

An air force cargo plane took off from Yaoqiang Airport in east China's Jinan City, capital of Shandong Province, late Wednesday and performed cloud seeding in four provinces including Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu and Anhui.

The operation took about six hours and covered nearly 50,000 square kilometers. The cargo plane shot more than 400 cloud-seeding shells into the sky in two sorties.

Zhao Jian, deputy director of Shandong's provincial precipitation enhancement office, said that after the operation, snow started to fall in some of the driest regions including Shandong's Zaozhuang and Heze, the eastern parts of Henan Province, and north parts of Anhui and Jiangsu provinces.

Experts from China Meteorological Administration said meteorological bureaus in Beijing and Shanxi Province had made efforts to boost snowfall since Tuesday.

Beijing got the first snow this winter Thursday morning, after 108 consecutive days without rain or snow.

Zhang Qiang, head of Beijing's artificial weather intervention office, said the office began cloud-seeding Wednesday night in nine districts and counties of Miyun, Mentougou, Yanqing, Haidian, Pinggu, Changping, Shijingshan, Fangshan and Huairou.

By 6 a.m. Thursday, 759 silver iodide rods had been used to increase precipitation.

In Anhui and Shanxi provinces, cloud-seeding materials were also shot into the sky from the ground.

The national meteorological authority said Thursday that rain and snow are likely to continue to fall in drought-hit Chinese provinces including Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Gansu and Shaanxi till the weekend, but they are unlikely to relieve parched croplands.