WENZHOU, China — Typhoon Dolphin made double landfall along the coast of Zhejiang province, bringing fierce gales and torrential rainfall that halted transport systems, flooded urban streets, and overturned vehicles.
In Wenzhou, dramatic footage captured a large semi-truck flipping onto its side on a rain-slicked roadway as severe wind gusts battered the coastal port city. Municipal emergency crews responded across the region as storm conditions uprooted trees, damaged building structures, and submerged low-lying residential areas. In Yongjia County within Wenzhou, heavy rain triggered mountain landslides that blocked primary access roads, prompting emergency engineering crews to deploy heavy excavators to clear mountain passes and restore access to isolated communities.
The National Meteorological Centre (NMC) reported that the storm initially struck near Yuhuan with maximum sustained wind speeds reaching 150 km/h before making a second landfall near Wenzhou roughly an hour later. In response to the approaching cyclone, local governments activated top-level emergency responses. Wenzhou authorities relocated more than 900,000 residents and established over 1,500 emergency shelters, while nearly 100,000 people were moved to safety in neighboring Fujian province and more than 200,000 in Shanghai.
As the storm system tracked northwest, extreme precipitation battered Shanghai. Central weather stations in Shanghai recorded between 313 mm and nearly 400 mm of rainfall within a 24-hour period marking the highest single-day rainfall recorded in the financial center in more than 150 years of meteorological record-keeping. The deluge flooded major urban thoroughfares and landmark tourist destinations, causing the social media phrase "Shanghai turns into the sea" to trend widely across online platforms as residents shared videos of inundated streets.
The storm severely impacted regional logistics, petrochemical hubs, and travel networks. Shanghai's two main passenger airports cancelled over 1,400 flights, while regional passenger train services, coastal ferry routes, and municipal subways faced widespread suspensions. Maritime authorities in Fujian suspended 55 coastal ferry routes and halted more than 110 offshore construction projects, while high-volume container facilities at Shanghai's Yangshan port cleared berths and moved over 500 commercial vessels to sheltered waters ahead of the gale-force winds.
Despite severe localized flooding and significant structural damage reported in coastal districts, emergency management authorities confirmed no direct fatalities from the storm's landfall in China.
"Dolphin is forecast to track westward before slowing over central and southwestern China and gradually losing strength." — Wang Haiping, Chief Forecaster at the National Meteorological Centre
Evaluating Relative Intensity vs. Historical Storm Standards
While descriptions of Typhoon Dolphin as "the most powerful tropical cyclone to strike China this year" are accurate within the current season's record, context is essential when assessing the storm's overall atmospheric severity.
A system with sustained winds of approximately 150 km/h corresponds roughly to a Category 1 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson scale. While capable of flipping heavy commercial vehicles, uprooting trees, and causing localized structural damage, winds of this strength fall well short of extreme historic super typhoons that have struck China's eastern seaboard with wind speeds exceeding 200 km/h to 240 km/h. Average rainfall across Zhejiang reached 173 mm during the height of the storm, surpassing precipitation levels from prior notable systems such as Typhoon Lekima, yet remaining within manageable limits for modern flood control infrastructure in key coastal cities.
The label reflects relative seasonal metrics rather than an absolute historical catastrophe. Much of the storm's disruptive impact stems from the sheer population density and economic concentration of eastern China's coastal hubs rather than unmeasurable atmospheric intensity. Proactive large-scale evacuations, widespread emergency shelter openings, and preemptive transit shutdowns by disaster management agencies played a decisive role in preventing heavy casualties despite widespread urban flooding and gale-force wind damage.
What's Next: Inland Progression and Landslide Monitoring
Although the weather system has weakened into a tropical storm as it moves inland, meteorologists warn that persistent heavy precipitation continues to pose significant hazards across more than ten provincial-level regions, including Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangsu. High-level alerts for flash floods and mountain torrents remain active across eastern and southern Zhejiang through mid-week. Municipal utility teams, electrical workers, and civil engineering corps continue working to repair damaged power facilities, clear fallen timber, and reopen flood-damaged roadways as transport networks progressively resume service.
Sources
- LiveMint: Typhoon Dolphin in China: Over 1 million evacuated, flights cancelled, flood alerts issued
- The Guardian: Typhoon Dolphin: More Than a Million People Evacuated in China as Record Rainfall Dumped on Shanghai
- Al Jazeera: Typhoon Dolphin Hits Eastern China, More Than One Million Evacuated
- Channel NewsAsia: Typhoon Dolphin Weakens But Disrupts Travel in East China
- Xinhua: Typhoon Dolphin to Move Inland, Bringing Heavy Rain to Multiple Regions###