Typhoon Dolphin Floods Shanghai, Forces More Than a Million Evacuations in China

SHANGHAI —

Typhoon Dolphin came ashore in China's Zhejiang province on Sunday evening with sustained winds of 151 kilometers per hour (94 mph), then weakened into a tropical storm by early Monday, but the rain it left behind has swamped Shanghai and forced more than a million people from their homes, according to Reuters and The Guardian.

A weather station in central Shanghai recorded nearly 313 millimeters (12.3 inches) of rain in the 24 hours before 7 a.m. Monday, the heaviest one-day total in more than 150 years of record-keeping in the city, The Guardian reported. Another station in the city logged almost 400 millimeters. Videos of flooded streets around the Wukang Mansion, a well-known Shanghai landmark, spread on the Chinese social media platform Weibo under a hashtag that translates to "Shanghai turns into the sea," according to the Guardian.

In Zhejiang, the province where Dolphin made landfall, average rainfall from Friday evening to Monday morning reached 173 millimeters, more than during earlier major typhoons Lekima and Bavi, the Guardian reported. Wenzhou, a coastal city in the province, relocated more than 900,000 residents and opened over 1,500 emergency shelters. Neighboring Fujian province moved nearly 99,000 people out of high-risk areas, and Shanghai evacuated 215,600 people, far more than an earlier estimate of 30,300, according to the Guardian.

Airports and Subways Shut Down

Shanghai's two airports, Pudong and Hongqiao, canceled 642 and 301 flights, respectively, on Monday, a total of 943 cancellations that cut capacity by nearly 40 percent, according to a city government notice cited by the South China Morning Post. Four subway lines in the city were completely halted because of the rain, though some train service to Hangzhou began to recover, the Post reported.

Shanghai's flood control authorities warned that parts of the city could see standing water up to 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) deep and issued orange and yellow rainstorm alerts, the second and third highest on a four-tier scale, the Post reported. One 70-year-old shop owner told the local outlet The Paper he had never seen flooding like it, and a city worker said the sewage system was already full and could not take on more water, according to the Post.

Storm Pushes North, Effects Felt Across Asia

State broadcaster CCTV said Dolphin had traveled 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) before making landfall, giving it a life cycle three times longer than a typical typhoon, Reuters reported. The storm is now forecast to move into the central provinces of Hubei and Henan while pushing rain north toward Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei through Thursday. Beijing has raised warnings for torrential rain and said it was ready to activate its flood response Tuesday morning, according to Reuters. Chinese officials compared the storm's potential impact to Typhoon Doksuri, which caused record rainfall in Beijing after crossing the country in 2022.

The storm's effects reached well beyond mainland China. Hong Kong hit its highest recorded temperature, 36.9 degrees Celsius (98.4 degrees Fahrenheit), on Sunday as Dolphin fueled intense heat in the city, with the hot weather expected to continue into Tuesday, according to the Guardian. Taiwan suspended ferry services and canceled more than 180 flights. In Japan's Okinawa prefecture, the storm injured six people and cut power to more than 50,000 buildings. In the Philippines, Dolphin did not make landfall but intensified seasonal monsoon rains that flooded parts of the northern Luzon region, including areas around Manila, the Guardian reported.