Strong winds and torrential rain lashed China’s densely populated east coast on Thursday after Typhoon Muifa forced some 1.6 million people to flee their homes and grounded most flights at Shanghai’s main airports.
Muifa is the strongest tropical cyclone to hit Shanghai — home to more than 25 million people — since records began in 1949, state broadcaster CCTV said.
However, there were no immediate reports of deaths or casualties.
At least 426,000 people have been evacuated in Shanghai and another 1.2 million people have been taken to makeshift shelters in neighboring Zhejiang province, CCTV added.
Heavy rains caused traffic congestion and flooding in several areas of the Yangtze River Delta region, a key global manufacturing hub.
Huge waves were seen hitting the coast in Hangzhou Bay south of Shanghai, and national radio reported a landslide in Ninghai County, Zhejiang Province.
With winds up to 125 kilometers per hour, the storm made landfall in Shanghai’s Fengxian district at 00:30 (Wednesday 16:30 GMT) on Thursday.
It had previously led to the cancellation of all flights to China’s largest financial hub.
According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, Muifa previously struck the city of Zhoushan in Zhejiang on Wednesday.
Air traffic slowly resumed in Shanghai as the storm moved north, but most flights from the city’s two main airports were canceled Thursday morning, according to flight data provider Flightradar24.
Operations at some of Asia’s largest container shipping ports in Shanghai and neighboring Ningbo, which were suspended due to the typhoon, were expected to resume later Thursday, port officials said.
Officials ordered all fishing vessels in the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea to anchor in ports as northeast China braced for the typhoon.
The storm moved into east China’s Jiangsu Province on Thursday morning, and the wind speed weakened to about 90 kilometers per hour, the Central Meteorological Observatory said.
The storm came shortly after Typhoon Hinnamnoor hit Shanghai and its neighboring region last week, causing the suspension of ferry service in Shanghai and the closure of schools in parts of Zhejiang.
According to state media, Muifa is the 12th typhoon to hit China this year.
Tropical storms, which are expected to increase as the planet warms, increased sharply in 2021, according to a report by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this month.
