More than one million people have been evacuated across eastern China, including Shanghai, as Typhoon Dolphin battered the region after making landfall in Zhejiang province on Sunday evening.
The typhoon struck Yuhuan in Zhejiang at around 17:30 local time (09:30 GMT), packing maximum winds of 150km/h (94mph), according to meteorological authorities, reports BBC.
It made a second landfall in the city of Wenzhou about an hour later.
The powerful storm disrupted transport across the region, with 1,400 flights cancelled in Shanghai alone. Chinese authorities had earlier placed the typhoon under the country’s highest-level red alert, but downgraded the warning to a tropical storm by Monday morning.
Dolphin is now moving inland, but authorities continue to warn of torrential rain, severe flooding and possible landslides through Wednesday.
Heavy rainfall was forecast on Monday across Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, as well as Shanghai.
Authorities have advised residents to avoid outdoor activities, while several major tourist attractions remain closed. These include parts of Disneyland and Legoland, along with several viewing platforms along Shanghai’s Bund.
State media footage showed floodwater entering ground-floor businesses in Shanghai’s former French Concession, a popular tourist area, while residents were seen wading through ankle-deep water.
Several Chinese state media outlets reported that a nine-year-old boy from Wenling in Zhejiang was missing after being swept into the sea. Officials have not reported any deaths.
Forecasters said some parts of Zhejiang could receive between 250mm and 500mm of rain over the next few days.
In Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, authorities have waived parking fees at all public parking spaces for motorists seeking shelter from strong winds and floodwaters.
Wenzhou authorities have moved around 900,000 residents to safer locations and opened more than 1,000 emergency shelters. In Taizhou, about 390,000 people have also been evacuated.
In neighbouring Fujian province, maritime authorities suspended dozens of passenger ferry services and stopped more than 100 offshore construction projects.
China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported that Dolphin travelled about 6,000km before reaching land, giving it a lifespan more than three times that of an average typhoon.
The broadcaster also said the storm had an unusually large circulation and the capacity to produce intense rainfall.
Authorities have also taken action against misinformation circulating online. State media reported that two people were detained for allegedly spreading false information about the storm.
A 60-year-old man reportedly used artificial intelligence to create a fake video claiming that a person in Shanghai had fallen from a building during the typhoon.
Another man, aged 32, re-edited storm footage posted by other social media users in a way authorities considered misleading.
Before reaching China, Dolphin brought torrential rain to the Philippines, northern parts of Taiwan and Japan’s Okinawa island.
The Philippines’ Office of Civil Defence said eight people had died due to heavy monsoon rains brought by Dolphin and other storms earlier in the week. More than 7,000 people are sheltering at evacuation centres across the country.
In Okinawa, five elderly people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to the prefectural government. Three of them were injured after falling in the strong winds.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong recorded a temperature of 36.9C on Sunday, the highest ever recorded there, as Dolphin pushed warm air across the city, according to the weather observatory.
Typhoon season in the western Pacific generally runs from May to October, when such storms are more common.
Experts say this year is a strong El Niño year, a weather pattern that can contribute to more intense typhoons.
