Rains from the dying typhoon devastate China on seventh day
BEIJING (Reuters) – Heavy typhoon rains kept southern China flooded for a seventh day as slow-moving storm clouds moved from coastal Guangdong to Guangxi, flooding low-lying areas, blocking roads and trapping residents.
In rural Bobai county in the Guangxi region, rescue workers on attack boats have been busy since Sunday night carrying people to safety as water stranded homes more than two meters (6.6 feet) deep, state media reported on Monday.
Heavy rain is expected to continue in Guangxi in the next few days.
Haikui has weakened from a typhoon to a tropical storm since making landfall in Fujian province on September 5, but its remnant spread has continued to wreak havoc across southern China, with the populous city of Shenzhen suffering the heaviest rain on record was flooded in 1952. Neighboring Hong Kong was hit by the worst storm in 140 years.
Scientists warn that the typhoons hitting China are becoming more intense and their paths are becoming more complex, increasing the risk of disasters, even in coastal cities like Shenzhen, which regularly brave tropical cyclones and already have strong flood defense capabilities.
“Typhoons that move far inland hit regions that have historically experienced less heavy rainfall and strong winds and often have lower disaster resilience, leading to greater losses,” said Shao Sun, a climatologist at the University of California in Irvine.
“In this case of Shenzhen, the disaster was mainly due to the slow westward movement of the residual circulation of Haikui, which was almost stagnant in spatial position from the afternoon of September 7th to the early hours of September 8th, and a “pull effect.” “Heavy rainfall occurred, causing the event to exceed its expected intensity.”
A so-called “train effect” refers to the cumulative effect of multiple convective cloud systems passing over an area in succession, resulting in significant accumulation of precipitation accumulations and greatly increasing the potential for heavy or even extreme rainfall.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Michael Perry)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
