China prepares for heavy rain as typhoon nears Shanghai

Lightning strikes during a thunderstorm over Shanghai on August 15, 2024. Agence France-Presse

SHANGHAI — Chinese authorities prepared for heavy rain on Sunday as a strong typhoon approached the country’s heavily populated eastern seaboard.

Typhoon Bebinca was expected to make landfall along a swath of coastline including the megacity of Shanghai sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning, according to Beijing’s emergency management ministry.

The ministry said in a statement on Saturday that the storm would cause “heavy to torrential” downpours with “local heavy or extremely heavy rainstorms” between Sunday and Tuesday.

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Officials held a meeting Saturday to “research and deploy flood and typhoon control work in key areas”, according to the statement.

The water resources ministry on Saturday launched a level-four emergency response — the lowest in a tiered system — for flooding in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Bebinca’s expected landfall comes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, a public holiday in China.

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The emergency management ministry said officials must “pay close attention to the development of the typhoon”, adding that “many people will be traveling, mobility will be high and safety risks will be prominent”.

Shanghai municipal authorities urged residents on Sunday to “strengthen efforts to guard against harmful effects of the typhoon on high-altitude work, transportation, infrastructure and agriculture”.

Some flights to and from major airports in Shanghai were cancelled or rescheduled on Sunday because of the typhoon, state media reported.

Passenger shipping lines were scheduled to be suspended in Shanghai from Sunday due to the typhoon, according to an official statement on the social media account of the municipal port and shipping development centre.

China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are driving climate change and making extreme weather more frequent and intense.

Another typhoon, Yagi, killed at least four and injured 95 when it passed through China’s southern Hainan island this month, according to national weather authorities.

Bebinca passed through Japan’s Amami island overnight through Sunday, packing gusts of up to 198 kilometres (123 miles) per hour, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

“In the Amami region, the risk of landslides has increased due to the heavy rainfall until now,” it added.

Last month, a powerful typhoon dumped heavy rains across Japan, triggering transport havoc and killing at least six people.

Strong rain in 2021 triggered a devastating landslide in the Japanese resort town of Atami that killed 27 people.