The government is taking extra measures to deal with possible flooding.
Beijing:
Beijing and other cities braced for severe flooding on Friday as summer storms rolled across much of China as the interior baked in intense heat and threatened to shrink the country’s largest freshwater lake.
Wild weather swings have gripped China since April, causing deaths, damage to infrastructure and wilting crops and fears about its ability to cope with climate change.
Historically, China’s rainy season begins in late July, but extreme weather has made storms more intense and unpredictable, exposing heavily built-up megacities with poor or inadequate drainage to potentially deadly flooding.
In Beijing, authorities deployed more than 2,600 people to pre-empty dozens of pumping stations and clean thousands of water outlets along roads. Several bus routes through the suburbs and mountainous areas were halted.
Authorities in the neighboring city of Tianjin also stepped up efforts to control flooding in the Hai Basin, a major northern drainage system. In contrast, scant rainfall in Jiangxi province has caused Lake Poyang, the country’s largest body of freshwater, to fall to its lowest level for this time of year since records began in 1951.
Known as the Kidneys of China for the role it plays in regulating the flow of the Yangtze River, Poyang Lake normally swells with rain in the summer and recedes in the winter. Last year it also shrank unexpectedly due to drought.
The Central Meteorological Observatory on Friday warned of heavy rainfall in eight provinces and autonomous regions until Saturday night, state media said.
Some areas could receive heavy rains in the short term with maximum rainfall of 30 to 60 millimeters (1.2 to 2.4 in) and more than 70 mm (2.76 in) in other places, CCTV reported.
The government is taking extra measures to deal with possible flooding.
At a cabinet meeting led by Premier Li Qiang, officials said all localities and relevant departments should put people’s lives first and pay close attention to flood prevention and drought management, state radio reported on Friday.
Meanwhile, temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) and above continued to threaten other parts of China.
Northwestern Xinjiang, where temperatures reached a record high of 52.2°C on Sunday, remained shrouded in worse-than-normal heat, while neighboring Gansu province saw some areas experiencing intense heat while others warned of flooding and landslides.
Officials have repeatedly warned that China is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to its large population and unevenly distributed water resources.
In Jiangsu province, a waterfall collapsed at a high-speed train station in the drenched city of Wuxi, according to social media clips.
As many as 150 cities are flooded every summer, despite efforts to improve drainage.
In July 2021, extreme rainfall in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, killed nearly 400 people, including 14 who drowned in a flooded subway line. More rain had fallen in three days than the city receives in a year.
Heavy rainfall of up to 130 mm (5.12 in) is expected through Saturday morning in parts of Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin, the national weather bureau warned.
On Friday morning, part of an ancient city wall in Chongqing in southwest China collapsed after rainfall of up to 100.3 mm per hour over the past day.
On Friday afternoon, the Shanghai weather bureau warned of heavy rains of more than 50 mm per hour in the city of 25 million as precipitation intensified.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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