The city is blanketed by smog caused by the smoke generated as farmers outside the city burn their fields in preparation for planting the next crop.
A dense wave of smog began in Hefei surrounding Anhui as well as other Chinese major cities including Shanghai and Tianjin.
Summers here are oppressively hot and humid, with a July average of 28.3 °C (82.9 °F).
Hefei was the temporary capital for Anhui from 1853 to 1862. Following the Chinese victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, Hefei was made the capital of Anhui.
Before World War II, Hefei remained essentially an administrative center and the regional market for the fertile plain to the south.
A cotton mill was opened in 1958, and a thermal generating plant, using coal from Huainan, was established in the early 1950s.
It also became the seat of an industry producing industrial chemicals and chemical fertilizers.
Although Hefei was a quiet market town of only about 30,000 in the mid-1930s, its population grew more than tenfold in the following 20 years.
The city's administrative role was strengthened by the transfer of the provincial government from Anqing in 1949, but much of its new growth derived from its development as an industrial city.
In the late 1950s an iron and steel complex was built.
In addition to a machine-tool works and engineering and agricultural machinery factories, the city has developed an aluminum industry and a variety of light industries. situation is becoming better because of the effort of both the government and the people.
Hefei features a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) with four distinct seasons.