By Liz Lee, Tingshu Wang and Alessandro Diviggiano
LUOHE, China, Aug 12 (Reuters) – China’s strongest typhoon this year battered the capital with bouts of intense rain that flooded key roads and stranded vehicles, while lashing wide swathes of the country, after setting new rainfall records in central and eastern provinces.
The world’s second-largest economy is increasingly battling destructive weather that scientists link to climate change, especially this year, as an emerging El Niño pattern boosts temperatures and fuels more frequent and intense typhoons.
The capital declared its second-highest rainstorm warning, suspending 250 bus routes and shutting 150 tourist attractions, while 10 subway lines ran at reduced speed, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
The downpours turned a multi-lane roadway in Beijing into a virtual river, bringing traffic to a standstill with cars and buses partially submerged, video images showed on China’s Rednote.
Its northern district of Changping received the highest hourly rainfall on Wednesday, authorities said, being doused with 90.7 mm (3.6 inches) within an hour after 9 a.m.
The typhoon has weakened this week after travelling over 6,000 km (3,700 miles) to hit land on Sunday in the eastern province of Zhejiang, but its remnants are drawing tropical moisture deep inland, threatening floods.
“The most troublesome part is that it affects work and life,” said Zhao Junxia in Luohe, a city in the central province of Henan. “It’s very inconvenient for food and transport.”
Scores of cars crowded a bridge that stayed above the encroaching floods in the province’s coastal city of Yuhuan after almost 200 mm (8 inches) of rain that submerged nearby streets, social media footage verified by Reuters showed.
State media said rainfall records were shattered in parts of Zhejiang and the central provinces of Henan and Hubei this week.
Records for a single day of rain in August were smashed in the city of Wugang, home to one of China’s largest steel companies, which received 209.5 mm (8.2 inches) of rain, while Xiangyang received 169.1 mm (6.6 inches).
MORE RAIN AHEAD
People in northern and central regions geared up for more days of rain from the remnants of the storm’s vast rain bands.
In Luohe, Zhao, who hosts short videos on Douyin, China’s equivalent of TikTok, said she moved her car to higher ground before the rain arrived, to avoid a repeat of her experience some years ago.
“We parked the car 2 km (1.2 miles) away ahead of time because the waterlogging near our apartment can be particularly serious,” the 32-year-old added.
Chinese meteorologists are reaching for a new generation of artificial intelligence weather models to bolster traditional forecasting systems and beef up resilience to extreme weather.
Each year, extreme rainfall causes billions of dollars in economic losses as manufacturing is disrupted and crops are washed away.
(Reporting by Liz Lee, Tingshu Wang and Alessandro Diviggiano in Luohe, Joe Cash, Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo in Beijing; Editing by Jamie Freed and Clarence Fernandez)
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