Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Over the next few days, central and southern China should experience heavy rain as the wide rain bands of...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Over the next few days, central and southern China should experience heavy rain as the wide rain bands of a weakening typhoon wash interior from the southern part of the country.
The weekend brought severe rain and wind to several southern regions that had already become flooded following weeks of downpours and thunderstorms thanks to China's first typhoon of the year.
Chaba has been reduced by the Central Meteorological Observatory from a typhoon to a tropical depression, although extremely unsteady weather is predicted to follow.
In Guangdong province, the Guangxi area, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, and Shandong provinces, forecasts expect heavy rain and occasionally high gusts from Monday through Wednesday.
China has long been vulnerable to floods, which may cause landslides and submerge large tracts of farmland. However, in the future years, increased extreme rains and flooding are expected to put China's emergency response system to the test.
According to Liu Weiping, vice minister of water resources, China's rainy season began half a month earlier this year, with average rainfall being 10% more than in prior years. This information was provided to Outlook Weekly, a publication run by the official Xinhua news agency.
Since late March, 425 rivers have reached flood warning levels due to rain, which is an 80 percent increase from the same time period in the years before to 1998, according to Liu.
China will increase weather monitoring and its flood storage capacity, Liu said, adding that "some weaknesses and weak links may be identified in our counter-flood and disaster assistance system."
According to state broadcaster CCTV, the China Meteorological Administration activated the third-highest rainstorm alert on Monday afternoon. Level I of China's four-tiered alert system denotes the most serious caution.
At 8:45 a.m., Jingzhou, a city in central Hubei province, issued a "red alert" for a rainfall (0045 GMT). The southern Guangdong province city of Dongguan received a red alert as well.
Local forecasters in the Guangxi region issued red warning signals for the cities of Bobai and Luchuan, with a combined population of about 3 million.
Over the weekend, an engineering vessel with 30 people on board split in two off the coast of Hong Kong, leaving more than a dozen crew members missing, according to police.
In southern China, recent catastrophic rains and flooding have ruined property, slowed down traffic, and affected millions of people's daily lives.
Forecasters said last week that extreme weather, including abnormally heavy flooding, is projected to persist in China through August.
