Tropical Storm Dolphin made landfall on eastern China on Sunday evening, triggering widespread flooding across Zhejiang province and Shanghai [1, 3].
The storm's impact disrupted one of the world's busiest economic hubs, forcing the relocation of hundreds of thousands of residents and paralyzing air travel in the region.
Heavy rainfall caused rivers to overflow and increased the risk of landslides [1]. In response, Chinese authorities coordinated large-scale emergency measures. Reports on the scale of these efforts vary, with some sources stating over 300,000 people were preemptively relocated [3], while other reports indicate the number of evacuations exceeded 1 million [5].
Air travel in Shanghai faced severe disruptions as the storm moved inland. More than 1,300 flights were cancelled at Shanghai airports [3], though other reports listed nearly 950 grounded flights [4]. This turmoil affected around 40 percent of all flights in Shanghai [2].
The storm, also referred to as Typhoon Dolphin, brought intense precipitation that overwhelmed urban drainage systems and rural embankments [1, 2]. Local officials focused on clearing floodwaters and assessing damage to infrastructure in the wake of the Sunday landfall.
Emergency responders continued monitoring the region on Monday as flooding persisted in low-lying areas [1, 3]. Authorities have not yet released a final tally of casualties or the total economic cost of the infrastructure damage.
“Tropical Storm Dolphin made landfall on eastern China on Sunday evening, triggering widespread flooding.”
The disparity in evacuation and flight cancellation figures highlights the challenges of real-time data aggregation during natural disasters in China. The significant disruption to Shanghai's aviation sector—affecting nearly half of its flights—underscores the vulnerability of critical transport infrastructure to increasingly volatile tropical weather patterns in the East China Sea.
