<p>The outbreak of COVID-19 unprecedently impacts the world in many aspects. Air pollutants have been largely reduced in cities worldwide, as reported by numerous studies. We investigated the daily concentrations of SO<sub>2</sub>, NO<sub>2</sub>, CO and PM<sub>2.5</sub> monitored across the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang), China, from 2019 through 2020. The variation in NO<sub>2</sub> showed responding dips when the local governments imposed mobility restriction measures, while SO<sub>2</sub>, CO and PM<sub>2.5</sub> did not consistently correspond to NO<sub>2</sub>. This difference indicates that the restriction measures targeted traffic majorly. Sampling from two snow pits separately dug in 2019 and 2020 in Urumqi No.1 (UG1), we analysed water-stable isotopes, soluble ions, black and organic carbon (BC and OC). BC and OC show no differences in the snow-pit profiles dated from 2018 to 2020. The concentrations of human activity induced soluble ions (K<sup>+</sup>, Cl<sup>−</sup>, SO<sub>4</sub><sup>2−</sup> and NO<sub>3</sub><sup>−</sup>) in the snow shrank to 20 %–30% in 2020 of their respective concentrations in 2019, while they increased 2–3.5-fold in 2019 from before 2018. We suggest that the pandemic has already left marks in the cryosphere and outlook that more evidence would be exposed in ice cores, tree rings, and other archives in the future.</p>