China evacuates one million from homes as massive storm arrives
Chinese authorities evacuated more than a million people from their homes in eastern China, including Shanghai, as Typhoon Dolphin made landfall bringing heavy rain and widespread transport disruption. The storm, the strongest to hit China this year, prompted a red alert before being downgraded to a tropical storm, though officials continue to warn of torrential rain, flooding and landslides through Wednesday as it moves north.
Dolphin struck Yuhuan in Zhejiang province with winds of 150km/h before making a second landfall near Wenzhou; nearly 1,000 flights were cancelled in Shanghai alone, and tourist sites including parts of Disneyland and Legoland closed. Some 900,000 people were relocated in Wenzhou and 390,000 in Taizhou, with Zhejiang expecting up to 500mm of rain, while a nine-year-old boy remains missing after being swept into the sea. The storm had already killed eight people in the Philippines and injured five in Japan's Okinawa, and Chinese state media reported two people detained for spreading AI-generated or misleading footage of the storm online.
- Typhoon Dolphin forced over a million evacuations across eastern China, including Shanghai
- Nearly 1,000 Shanghai flights cancelled; severe flooding and landslide risk warned through Wednesday
- Storm earlier killed 8 in Philippines, injured 5 in Japan; boy missing in China
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Eastern China was hit by Typhoon Dolphin, a powerful storm that came ashore in Zhejiang province with winds over 150 kilometres per hour. Local authorities moved more than a million people out of harm's way as a precaution, while airports in nearby Shanghai cancelled well over a thousand flights ahead of the storm.
China regularly experiences typhoons during the summer months, and large-scale evacuations are a standard part of how authorities there try to limit casualties and damage. The storm's strength and the scale of disruption to travel and daily life have made this one of the more significant weather events to affect the region this year.
Beyond the immediate impact of wind and evacuations, the storm brings ongoing risks such as heavy rain, flooding and landslides, which can affect a wider area and continue for days after the storm itself has passed. This is why the story matters beyond the initial landfall: the danger to residents and infrastructure persists even as the storm weakens.