Tropical Storm Fengshen struck China’s southeastern coast yesterday, bringing new torrential downpours to a region reeling from heavy rains and deadly flooding earlier in the month.
The storm, which also packed high winds, made landfall in Guangdong Province early in the morning, closing schools and disrupting air traffic across the region and in Macau and Hong Kong, Xinhua news agency reported.
More than 13,000 ships returned to Guangzhou’s bustling port in advance of the storm, the agency said.
Heavy downpours in the nearby city of Zhongshan limited road visibility to just a few dozen meters, forcing some motorists to stop their vehicles, a reporter said.
The Hong Kong Airport Authority said 70 inbound or outbound flights servicing the territory were delayed or canceled due to the storm, Xinhua reported, adding that dozens of flights were similarly affected at other Chinese airports.
1,000 DEATHS
Fengshen, meaning the “God of Wind,” killed more than 1,000 people in the Philippines while rated as a typhoon and took a surprise turn toward southern China on Tuesday night.
Fengshen, since downgraded to a tropical storm, had been expected to swing into the South China Sea from the Philippines and track northward to Taiwan but instead veered northwest, Hong Kong’s observatory said.
Xinhua quoted Guangdong’s meteorological authority as saying the storm would move slowly north and gradually lose strength.
However, it was expected to continue to dump heavy rains on areas of eastern and southeastern China that have been pounded by deadly downpours since early this month.
The rains, the worst in more than a century for some regions, have killed at least 176 people and left 52 missing in flood-related incidents as of last week, Chinese state media reported.
200mm of RAIN
Fengshen’s landfall was preceded by heavy gales and the storm was expected to dump up to 200mm of rain on Shenzhen yesterday and today, Xinhua said.
The China Central Meteorological Station said heavy rains would sweep Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces for several days.
The storm triggered a morning suspension of Hong Kong Stock Exchange trading and paralyzed public transport in the southern Chinese territory.
Some tourists were stranded in Macau on Tuesday night after ferry services between Hong Kong, Macau and Shenzhen were halted.
FLOODS
The Chinese flooding earlier this month caused more than 1.6 million people to be evacuated in areas hardest hit by the rains, with large tracts of farmland submerged and economic losses to exceed US$2 billion, the Chinese government said.
Those floods had either swamped hundreds of roads in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces or left them cut off by landslides.
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