Typhoon Bawei Approaching — China's Emergency Response and Tech-Enabled Rescue in an Era of Compounding Extreme Weather

On July 10, 2026, the eleventh named typhoon of the year, Bawei, crossed into the twenty-four-hour warning line. China's National Meteorological Center reported that its outer spiral cloud bands had already begun to affect Taiwan, and coastal rain and wind had begun to move into Zhejiang. Just two days earlier, the tenth typhoon, Maysak, had caused severe flooding across Guangxi and Hunan — within a single week, two tropical cyclones had hit China in succession, putting the country's emergency-response system under a rare test of continuous strain.

From the emergency rescue in Guigang, Guangxi, to the rainstorm warnings in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, from drones lifting stranded residents out of the flood to long convoys of military trucks racing toward the front line, mid-July 2026 offered more than a weather forecast or a technology showcase: it delivered a complete picture of a multi-front mobilization of China's emergency-response system during a period of compounding extreme weather.

From Maysak to Bawei: Double Pressure in Two Weeks

At the start of July, the tenth typhoon Maysak caused the Liulan Reservoir to breach in Hengzhou, Guangxi — a snake farm in Dengwei Village was washed out, and several hundred snakes escaped into the village with the floodwater, forcing capture teams to go door to door to round them up. At the same time, roughly ten thousand students and faculty at a Guigang education park became stranded on a water-isolated island.

Before the Guangxi floods had fully receded, Bawei had already formed over the western Pacific. On the afternoon of July 10, the National Meteorological Center issued an advisory: Bawei had entered the twenty-four-hour warning line, with a large circulation, strong intensity, and a long duration of impact. Regional downpours were forecast across the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei area, with local accumulations in southeastern Zhejiang and northeastern Fujian of 500–600 mm and parts of Taiwan potentially exceeding 1,000 mm.

That same day the Ministry of Natural Resources activated a Class III geological-disaster response for Zhejiang and Fujian, and a Class IV response for Beijing and Hebei. Hubei also issued a risk advisory for Bawei, warning of heavy to torrential rain in eastern parts of the province, with localized extreme rainfall of up to 10–12 on the Beaufort scale.

Drones Lifting People: When People's Weight Outweighs the Rules

In Guangxi, one rescue story drew wide attention. In Yunbiao Town, two stranded residents — a tanker-truck driver sheltering on top of his vehicle and an ill villager — were lifted out by heavy-duty drones after boats could not reach them and all roads had been cut off.

Carrying passengers is normally strictly prohibited in standard drone operations. That safety line was drawn from accumulated accident experience. But the on-scene commander gave a plain but forceful answer: "In principle drones don't lift people, but people matter more than the principle."

In his analysis Shen Yi distilled this detail into a core judgment: what "serving the people" really looks like. He added a related institutional detail — DJI Agriculture released a special notice providing after-sales support for drones used in the Guangxi rescue, authorizing national dealerships to offer free repairs: "this undoubtedly lets civilian pilots throw themselves into emergency operations without having to worry about the cost of damage to their equipment."

The exception reveals a governance philosophy deeper than any particular procedure: all institutions, technologies and processes ultimately exist to safeguard human life. Rules set a floor; lives have no ceiling.

Convoys of Military Trucks: Saturating-Style Rescue in Visual Form

On the streets of Guigang, camouflage-painted military trucks ran end to end, stretching beyond the horizon. Netizens called it "China's saturating-style rescue." Official data: the PLA and the People's Armed Police deployed more than 2,400 personnel, over seventy boats, more than 260 vehicles and engineering machines, and mobilized over 5,500 militia.

Jun Zhengping's commentary highlighted the message carried by these truck convoys — "it transmits not only the scale of mobilization but also a determination: at any cost, leaving no blind spot."

This saturation logic matches the pattern seen in every major natural disaster since 2024 — the marginal cost of resource input is subordinated to the priority of coverage and speed of response. It requires two preconditions: a large reserve of dispatchable material, and rapid cross-jurisdictional, cross-service coordination.

Multiple Front Lines, One Day

The information density on July 10 was unusually high:

• 14:35, the Ministry of Natural Resources activated Class IV geological-disaster response for Beijing and Hebei
• 15:32, a working group was dispatched to Fujian/Zhejiang to guide Typhoon Bawei response
• 15:54, People's Daily released a documentary on the "isolated-island rescue" at the Guigang education park
• 16:08, Jun Zhengping commentary on the military-truck convoys
• 16:10, three roads in Beijing's Fangshan District placed under traffic control, non-rescue vehicles turned away
• 16:27, a detailed briefing on the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei rainstorm warning — Taiwan local accumulations could exceed 1,000 mm
• 16:50, the geological-disaster response for Fujian/Zhejiang upgraded
• 16:51, safety guidance for Beijing residents under an orange rainstorm warning

On the same day, flood rescue in southern China was still being wrapped up, disaster-prevention mobilization in the north had already begun, and coastal preparations for the typhoon were underway simultaneously. Three operational fronts shifted attention within hours inside a single administrative system.

Governance in the Era of Normalized Extreme Weather

Summer 2026 shows a new pattern of "compound meteorological risk": multiple typhoons arriving in rapid succession, rain bands crossing latitudes, and the disaster / pre-disaster cycle in any single jurisdiction compressed to its limit. While Guangxi was still running door-to-door snake capture, Fujian and Zhejiang had begun geological-disaster preparations for the next landfall.

Any country's emergency system faces a structural stress test under such conditions. China's main response so far is a "no-front-downgrading" principle: rescue forces in the south are not thinned while warning systems in the north are activated at the same time. It is not a serial "rescue first, then prepare" model, but a parallel "rescue and prepare running together" model.

A commentary reposted by Chang'anjie Zhishi (a commentary account affiliated with Beijing Daily) summarized the tension: "Drones broke a principle to protect lives." Behind that sentence lies a broader governance question — when exceptions to rules keep accumulating, it means reality is outrunning the scenarios those rules were designed for. That is not a flaw of the system; it is the dynamic recalibration problem any finely designed emergency architecture must face in an era of rising extreme-event frequency.

Evening Update as Bawei Drew Closer: Time-Structured Rainfall, Cascading Transport Effects, and Long-Term Pattern

By the evening of July 10, Bawei had crossed into the twenty-four-hour warning line. At 15:00, Bawei was less than 900 km from the Zhejiang–Fujian border, its outer spiral cloud bands already affecting nearby seas. Compared with the early-afternoon information, this evening batch added three new dimensions: the time structure of the rainfall, the cascading effects on transport, and a long-horizon read on the rainfall pattern.

A Two-Stage Rainfall: One Week, Two Operating Modes

Sun Qianqian, an analyst at China Weather Network, split Bawei's rainfall into two stages. Stage one (July 10–12) would be driven by the typhoon's own circulation combined with long-distance moisture transport — heavy rain across eastern, northern and northeastern China, with sustained strong winds along the southeast coast. Stage two (July 13–15) would see the depression or remnant vortex pushing north, affecting Jianghan, Huanghuai, North China and the Northeast — until July 16, Bawei's effects would only fully end.

By precipitation distribution, southeastern Zhejiang and northeastern Fujian could see localized cumulative totals of 500–600 mm, parts of Taiwan over 1,000 mm; northeastern Beijing and northeastern Hebei up to 300–350 mm locally. With the southern coast flooding and the north under simultaneous heavy rain, the typhoon-defense band in the south and the rainstorm response in the north would significantly overlap in time — not sequential, but parallel.

The Transport Network: 54 Airports at Once

As of 17:00 on July 10, Feichangzhun (VariFlight) data showed 54 airports affected by Bawei — covering Taipei, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Wuxi, Hefei, Nanchang and Nanjing, among others. Multiple airlines issued free rebooking and refund policies. Online travel platforms activated emergency guarantees simultaneously. On the rail side, cross-provincial long-distance services could be subject to speed restrictions or suspensions based on conditions — large-scale airport disruption layered on top of an urban rainstorm warning meant transport systems would switch between "typhoon mode" and "flood-defense mode" within a single day.

Urban Evacuation: Beijing Approaches 100,000 Moved

By 17:00 on July 10, Beijing had moved 36,279 households / 95,657 people. Fangshan and Mentougou districts activated Class I flood-control emergency response, and multiple districts issued red rainstorm warnings. This is the largest urban evacuation Beijing has run since the start of this flood season — testing whether the urban emergency system can complete an orderly evacuation of nearly 100,000 people between a warning's release and the rain's arrival.

A Historic Shift in the Rainfall Pattern

In the evening, Chang'anjie Zhishi reposted an analysis from Fu Shenming of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, providing a long-cycle perspective that goes beyond Bawei itself. Fu noted that from 2026 to 2055, the cumulative annual rainstorm volume in North China's rainstorm belt will trend upward in waves. "The era of no great floods in the north" is over; "drought in the north, floods in the south" is shifting to "drought and floods in both north and south." Extreme weather is taking on "normalized high risk" as a defining feature.

That means Bawei is not an isolated event. On the same day, the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center reported that the sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific continue to warm anomalously, with El Niño now entering a phase of rapid development, projected to form a super El Niño event this autumn–winter — possibly surpassing the 1997/98 record. A super El Niño developing, a super typhoon making landfall, a city evacuating nearly 100,000 people — three strands converge on the same day and point to a signal broader than any single weather event: extreme weather's frequency and intensity is rising systemically, and "multi-front parallel response" capacity will become a standing requirement.

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July 11 Morning Update: Bawei Re-Strengthens, the Eye Vanishes but Wind and Rain Spread Wider

In the early hours of July 11, Bawei strengthened from typhoon intensity to severe typhoon. At 05:00 its center sat about 560 km east-southeast of the Zhejiang–Fujian border, with maximum winds of 42 m/s (Force 14) and a central pressure of 955 hPa. The National Meteorological Center continued to issue an orange typhoon warning, an orange rainstorm warning and a yellow severe-convection warning at 06:00 on July 11 — three warnings in force at once is uncommon in recent typhoon response.

The Physical Meaning of a Vanishing Eye

The most noteworthy meteorological change came on the evening of July 11: Bawei, which had a clear eye, exhibited an "eye closure" — the eye boundary blurred on satellite imagery and was filled with cloud. Lin Nan, an analyst at the China Meteorological Administration, explained this means the typhoon's compact inner-core structure has been disrupted and the central maximum wind speed has begun to fall.

But weakening intensity does not equal reduced threat. As energy spreads outward from the core, the typhoon's circulation becomes larger — the radii of the Force 7, Force 10 and Force 12 wind circles all expand significantly, and the wind-and-rain footprint ends up wider than when the eye was clearly defined. This means that before landfall Bawei enters a "weakening in intensity, expanding in footprint" phase, and the impact on the coast will not contract simply because intensity has tapered.

Landfall Forecast and Track

Bawei was forecast to make landfall in the early hours of July 12 along the coast from Taizhou in Zhejiang to Fuding in Fujian (severe-typhoon intensity, Forces 13–14, 38–45 m/s), then track northwest before turning more northward. It would be the strongest typhoon to make landfall in China in 2026.

The rainfall forecast from 08:00 July 11 to 08:00 July 12 showed: heavy to torrential rain in Zhejiang, northern Fujian and Taiwan, with torrential to extreme rain in eastern and southern Zhejiang, northern Fujian and the central/northern parts of Taiwan (250–800 mm). Wind: Force 9–11 with gusts of Force 12–13 across the northwestern and southern East China Sea, the sea east of Taiwan, Hangzhou Bay, Zhejiang coast and northeastern Fujian coast, with Force 12–14 in the waters near the storm's center.

Cross-Regional Coordination of the Warning System

The simultaneous release of three warnings reveals the response cadence. The orange typhoon warning focuses on physical-defense preparation for coastal areas, the orange rainstorm warning covers the longitudinal wind-and-rain band from Zhejiang to the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, and the yellow severe-convection warning puts the Northeast's thunderstorm winds in scope. Synchronization of the three means Bawei's defense is no longer a single coastal province's task, but a cross-regional coordination covering the East China Sea to North China and onward to the Northeast.

The predicted landfall timing had been narrowed to an hour-by-hour window — the early hours of July 12. As Bawei entered its final pre-landfall stage, the focus of attention will shift from "warning coverage and precision" to "the inland decay path and its secondary impact on inland provinces."

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July 11 — Eyewall Replacement, Red Warning and Three Warnings at Once

On July 11, as Bawei approached the Zhejiang–Fujian coast in its final stretch, it went through a key shift from compact structure to energy diffusion. In the early hours, Bawei upgraded from typhoon to severe typhoon, with maximum sustained winds near the center of Force 14 (42 m/s), moving northwest at 30–35 km/h. By afternoon, a key meteorological phenomenon occurred — the eye vanished.

The "Two-Sided" Effect of an Eyewall Replacement

Lin Nan of the China Meteorological Administration explained: in the afternoon, dry-cold air invaded the mid-upper levels and vertical wind shear increased, so on satellite imagery Bawei's originally clear, round eye was gradually filled with cloud — the colloquial "eye closure." This usually means the typhoon is beginning to weaken.

But it is worth noting that a vanishing eye does not mean an end to threat. On the contrary, with the inner-core structure disrupted, Bawei's energy spread rapidly outward from the core, expanding the radii of its Force 7, Force 10 and Force 12 wind circles. Sputnik reported that Bawei's Force 7 wind circle had ballooned to more than 500 km.

The Historic Moment of Three Concurrent Warnings

At 10:00 on July 11, the National Meteorological Center issued three warnings simultaneously: a red rainstorm warning (the year's first), an orange typhoon warning, and a yellow severe-convection warning. All three at once is not common in the history of meteorological warnings. It means that on the same day, China faced three overlaid threats from different weather systems stretching from the East China Sea coast to the North China Plain and onward to the Northeast.

The warnings' precision also reached its highest level in recent years. The red rainstorm warning covered localized extremes of 250–800 mm from Zhejiang to Taiwan (central-northern Taiwan), and 250–500 mm along eastern Zhejiang's coast; the severe-convection warning flagged Force-10-plus thunderstorm-gust risk in central-western Liaoning, central Hebei and eastern Zhejiang.

Multi-Level Escalation of Emergency Response

On that day, the central-to-local emergency-response system went through a dense sequence of escalations:

• 11:00, Zhejiang upgraded its typhoon-prevention response to Class I
• 11:00, the National Flood Control Headquarters activated a Class IV emergency response for Shanghai/Jiangsu/Anhui/Jiangxi/Sichuan
• During the night, eight Beijing districts activated Class I flood-control emergency response (Fengtai, Fangshan, Shunyi, Pinggu, Huairou, Miyun, Mentougou, Yanqing)

Zhejiang's Class I response means the entire province can enter an emergency flood-defense period with work, classes, business, transport halted, and roads closed. Beijing moved 38,130 households / 104,042 people citywide, closed 181 tourist sites and 167 tent-camping sites. By 11:00 on July 11, VariFlight's track forecast showed Bawei would affect 56 airports. All inbound and outbound flights at Wenzhou Longwan, Fuzhou Changle, Taizhou Luqiao and Lishui airports had been cancelled.

The Institutional Significance of High-Tier Response

The escalation reveals a "system test" for China's emergency-management architecture in 2026:

• Cross-province coordination: Bawei's track is uncertain — it could move deep inland or turn north. Emergency preparation must cover both "westward" and "northward" scenarios.
• Typhoon + rainstorm + severe convection in parallel: northern Beibu Gulf flooding (Maysak residue), coastal Zhejiang typhoon (Bawei landfall), and Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei rainstorm (long-distance moisture transport) coexisted on the same situation board in the same day.
• Compressed time window: between warning issuance and expected landfall / impact there were only about a dozen hours — far less than the "24-hour pre-activation" standard emergency window.

The Pre-Landfall Intensity Swing and the Public-Perception Tension

On the afternoon of July 11, in the last dozen or so hours before touching land, Bawei displayed a meteorological "self-contradiction": around midday, its near-center maximum wind oscillated on the line between Force 13 (typhoon) and Force 14 (severe typhoon). As a monsoon flow fed in overnight, Bawei briefly strengthened from Force 13 to Force 14 — just making the jump from typhoon to severe typhoon.

An expert reminder from the National Meteorological Center was clear: "Do not focus only on changes in the eye region; focus on its wind-and-rain footprint." The eyewall replacement briefly blurred the eye, but the wind-circle radius actually expanded past 1,000 km — a footprint already exceeding the land area of France and putting Bawei among the top three largest western-Pacific typhoons of the past decade.

The Beijing News published a commentary that afternoon that directly addressed the social-media question of "There's not much rain where I live — was the warning overblown?" Two pieces of evidence sit at the heart of the argument: first, Beijing covers an area equivalent to two-and-a-half Shanghais; personal experience cannot substitute for city-wide conditions — Pinggu District has already seen 196 mm of heavy-rainfall-class precipitation. Second, "weather is a sensitive chaotic system"; a forecast is not a postmortem but a probability projection — "it is better to over-defend nine times than to live once with regret."

Beijing Red Warning Escalation and the Legal Boundary of AI Forecasting

At 15:00 on July 11, the Beijing Meteorological Observatory escalated the rainstorm warning to a district-level red — Fangshan, Pinggu, Miyun, Huairou, Mentougou, Fengtai, Daxing, Tongzhou and Shunyi entered heavy-rainstorm warning scope. At 16:00, Beijing's Emergency Management Office issued the "Red Ten Lines" protection guide: businesses and organizations should not require attendance except where necessary, residents should not go out unless necessary, underground business premises should close, construction sites should halt, scenic areas should shut down.

A debate about the boundary of information rose to the surface on this day. People's Daily published a People's Sharp Commentary titled "Typhoons Should Not Simply Rely on AI Predictions," explicitly pointing out that certain bloggers using AI meteorological large models to issue typhoon track and rainfall forecasts are suspected of violating the Meteorology Law. Article 22's "unified public meteorological forecast issuance system" was not designed to restrict information flow but to ensure the authority of disaster warnings — when forecasts issued by professional agencies equipped with professional gear cannot be guaranteed fully accurate, the path-and-rainfall information crudely projected by AI in self-media hands, once it scales, will mislead the public.

After Landfall: The Second Wave — Post-Disaster Response and Distant-Heavy Rain

In the small hours around midnight on July 11, Bawei made its first landfall at Yuhuan in Taizhou, Zhejiang, followed immediately by a second landfall at Yueqing in Wenzhou, becoming the first super typhoon of 2026 to make two landfalls within 24 hours. At Shangda on the Jiaojiang River in Taizhou, Zhejiang, wind speeds reached 54.1 m/s (Force 16), breaking the local extreme-wind record.

Post-Landfall "Two-Lane Parallel" Emergency Response

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) urgently allocated 100 million RMB from the central budget to support post-typhoon emergency recovery, focusing on damaged roads, water infrastructure, schools and hospitals. The National Disaster Reduction Commission simultaneously activated a Class IV disaster-relief emergency response.

On the other hand, Bawei did not decay quickly after landfall. NMC chief forecaster Dong Quan noted that Bawei was being continuously fed by southerly flows from the equator, with moisture and energy supplies slowing its weakening. This means its wind-and-rain footprint does not end with "landfall" — it will move north along eastern Anhui to the Yellow Sea, continuing to affect eastern China, North China and the Northeast along the way.

Hong Kong was indirectly affected by Bawei's outer bands: more than 130 flights and multiple high-speed rail services were cancelled, with routes to/from Taiwan, mainland China and Japan broadly disrupted.

The extremity of this rain event shows in the numbers. From July 10–12, 111 stations in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region exceeded their all-time records (40 in Beijing, 46 in Hebei, 25 in Tianjin). Qianxi in Hebei saw 315.3 mm and Kuancheng 191.3 mm — both breaking their local single-day record. In Beijing, 52.2% of the city's 509 weather stations reached heavy-rainstorm class (≥50 mm), 13.2% reached torrential-rainstorm class (≥100 mm).

Beijing's Waterlogging: From Cause to Real-Time Lookup

On the morning of July 12, Tongzhou and Yizhuang residents found multiple road sections waterlogged and impassable. Di Suchuang of the Beijing Water Science and Technology Research Institute analyzed that Beijing's waterlogging is shaped by both natural and human factors: rising frequency of extreme rainstorms pressures drainage facilities, while the city's impermeable surface has expanded, the pipe network is aging (much of it built in the 1950s and 1960s), and underpass areas sit in basin-shaped terrain.

There was a small but reusable digital practice in this rainstorm round: AutoNavi (Amap) launched a "Waterlogging Map" — AI judged water depth and displayed centimeter-level values — and the "Haidian Water Affairs Tong" mini-program aggregated over a hundred electronic water-scale sensors with blue-yellow-red three-tier warnings. Both digital tools share one feature: they convert the foundational emergency question of "where is water sitting" from internal government data into a public information product usable by any resident.

Follow-on Support in Guangxi and Two-Disaster Coordination

In the same period, the post-disaster work from Typhoon Maysak in Guangxi was still ongoing. On top of the 100 million RMB allocated on July 6, the NDRC added another 100 million RMB to support Guangxi's further post-disaster emergency recovery. Troops from a Southern Theater Army unit had been rotating through multiple rescue points in Guigang since July 7, completing tasks like road clearance.

Within a single week, central disaster-relief funds were deployed to support two different provinces' post-disaster recovery, and additional allocations to a single disaster zone were in place within days — this shows the efficiency of emergency fiscal response in a sequential-disaster scenario, but also reveals the sustained draw that normalized extreme weather places on central fiscal reserves.

The International Dimension — Repatriation of Foreign Tourists During the Typhoon

Bawei's downstream effects picked up an international dimension on July 13. The Russian Association of Tour Operators announced that all Russian tourists in mainland China had been safely placed in hotels. The association noted that tours to Hangzhou had been cancelled, and if the weather did not improve in the coming days, part of the sightseeing fee would be refunded.

This set of messages came from Russian official channels rather than Chinese ones — the Russian Association of Tour Operators and Sputnik were the publishers, not Chinese tourism authorities. This means China's typhoon emergency-management of foreign nationals in its territory was indeed running efficiently (the Russian association confirmed tourists were "safe"), but China itself did not treat this as part of its publicity narrative.

It is not a major piece of news, but it is a side-data point measuring the "coverage boundary" of the emergency system: China's typhoon emergency response extends to foreigners, but the official narrative has not packaged it as "soft-power output." At least in the operational response to Bawei, ensuring foreigners' safety is a fact — but not a packaged story.

What to Watch Next

Bawei's landfall was forecast for the small hours of July 12 (Sanmen in Zhejiang to Cangnan). Four layers deserve continued attention afterwards:

1. Landfall intensity verification: after the eyewall replacement, do Bawei's actual landfall wind speeds and wind-and-rain footprint match the forecast?
2. Inland decay path: does the typhoon slow over land ("Doksuri-style" stalling) and produce localized extreme rain?
3. Multi-hazard overlay: does the North China heavy rain sit on top of the Guangxi floods' "continuation impact" — were response resources consumed by the earlier round?
4. Cross-basin response: the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei area on the Taihang piedmont had already seen significant rainfall; soil moisture was near saturation, and Bawei's long-distance moisture transport could turn what would otherwise be "ordinary storms" into compound disasters of "flash floods + urban waterlogging."

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The Closing Stage's Second Resource Allocation — Jilin Recovery and National Class IV Response

By July 15, Bawei's effects had not fully dissipated. On the very day the forecast called for "basically ending on the 15th," national-level resource allocation actions reached a new peak instead.

NDRC allocates 30 million RMB from central budget to support Jilin. On July 15, the National Commission for Disaster Reduction, in response to the severe impact of Typhoon Bawei (No. 9) and heavy rain on Jilin Province, activated a national Class IV disaster-relief emergency response. The NDRC urgently arranged 30 million RMB from the central budget, prioritizing damaged roads, water infrastructure, schools and hospitals for emergency recovery construction. The figure is not large — compared with the 100 million RMB added for Guangxi — but the signal is clearer: disaster assessment along the Northeast axis is now complete, and the recovery phase is officially launched.

National Flood Control Office sends central flood-control supplies to Liaoning. One day before Jilin received funds (July 14), Liaoning's flood-prevention needs had also reached the national level. At the request of Liaoning's Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, the National Flood Control Office worked with the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration to dispatch 500,000 woven bags, 100,000 square meters of long-filament geotextile, and 150 sets of patrol-and-warning light groups as central flood-control supplies.

The Cognitive Framework for Normalized Extreme Weather — "North-Dry, South-Flood" Pattern, Profoundly Changed

On July 15, the day of the beginning of "fu" (the hottest period of summer), Chang'anjie Zhishi published a long-form commentary on the overall cognitive framework for extreme weather. It was not a news dispatch, but a systematic look at changes in the global extreme-weather frequency and pattern over the past two years.

Its core judgment: the traditional "drought in the north, floods in the south" climate pattern is profoundly changed.

This judgment echoes an observation that surfaced repeatedly during Bawei — the drainage and emergency systems of Shenyang and Tieling, faced with this kind of rainfall volume, were not "unprepared," but "never designed for this magnitude in the first place."

The article also offered a rational response to the common narrative of "always having to build to a 'millennium-flood' standard":

This point of view is relatively rare in the current discourse. The more common narrative is "Why are cities still this fragile in the face of rainstorms?" — but this article clearly identifies the existence of a hardware ceiling, and pivots the solution to the software level: forecasting, drill rehearsal, emergency management, safety protection.

In the long run, the article proposes a cognitive leap from "emergency response" to "planning" — urban construction plans should strengthen climate-feasibility arguments and increase the adaptability and resilience of cities to future climate change. If this suggestion is implemented, it means shifting from "how to rescue when disasters hit" to "presupposing in the planning stage that disasters will be larger" — a change in design philosophy, not merely a budget increase.

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The Technology Dimension — Swarm Drones Cross from Rescue to Observation

On July 26, Typhoon "Hongxia" made landfall in Huizhou, Guangdong. Unlike with Bawei, this time meteorological researchers did something they had never done before — for the first time they used a swarm of drones to observe a typhoon's full transit.

This was a systematic experiment at the China Meteorological Administration's low-altitude-economy UAV-meteorology field-science base (Dapeng Peninsula, Shenzhen). Multiple drones carrying meteorological payloads flew in a coordinated observation array, taking multi-point and multi-layer synchronous measurements of atmospheric elements in the airspace and obtaining vertical profile data on low-altitude temperature, humidity, wind field, and turbulence as the typhoon passed. The experiment also recorded flight attitude, track deviations, power consumption and other operational parameters, mapping out the meteorological constraint boundaries for safe drone flight in extreme weather.

The significance is not just on the meteorological side. It demonstrates an extension of China's drone capability from "rescue tool" to "scientific observation platform" — in early July in Guangxi, drones were used to lift stranded residents (physical rescue); in late July in Shenzhen, drones were used to probe typhoon structure (scientific observation). The same technology base found application footholds in two very different scenarios.

From rescue to observation, from emergency to prevention — this capability line itself extends the framework of "tech-enabled rescue." Bawei tested response speed; Hongxia tested prediction capability. Together they close the loop from pre-disaster observation to in-disaster response to post-disaster recovery in the extreme-weather system.

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White Dolphin Takes Over — Another Direct Landfall in Early August

On August 8, the No. 13 typhoon "White Dolphin" (Baitun) crossed into Zhejiang's twenty-four-hour warning line. At a media briefing, NMC chief forecaster Wang Haiping gave the key parameters: at 10:00 its center sat about 500 km due east of Wenzhou over the southern East China Sea, with maximum sustained winds of Force 14 (45 m/s), severe typhoon. It was forecast to make landfall between Zhoushan in Zhejiang and Fuding in Fujian on the night of the 9th to the morning of the 10th, at Force 13–14.

Compared with Bawei, White Dolphin had two distinctive features. First, size: its circulation diameter exceeded 1,000 km, described as a "giant typhoon." Within its first 10 days it had undergone five eyewall replacements and had entered the final phase of its life cycle. On the morning of the 8th, satellite imagery showed "eye closure" — the eyewall collapsing and the eye filled with cloud — but the chief forecaster specifically clarified: eye closure is one stage in an eyewall replacement and does not mean the storm must weaken; after the replacement is complete the storm can re-intensify.

Second, the extreme rainfall: heavy rain was forecast from the 8th to the 12th, with downpours to torrential rain across central-southern Zhejiang and its coast, and extreme rain in Taizhou, Wenzhou, eastern Lishui, eastern Jinhua, eastern Shaoxing, southern Ningbo and other places, with localized 24-hour accumulations up to 500 mm. Zhejiang and Shanghai both sat in the typhoon's "danger semicircle" (the right-front quadrant relative to the storm's motion). Heavy rain over the next three days would affect seven provinces/municipalities, with localized cumulative rainfall in eastern Zhejiang exceeding 600 mm.

Emergency response escalated in step. At 08:00 on August 8, the Taizhou Flood Control Headquarters raised its typhoon-prevention response to Class II and issued an "Open Letter to All Citizens." The day before, the China Meteorological Administration had held a media briefing on defense measures. Similar to the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei coordination while Bawei approached, this round was a primary direct defense in Zhejiang — the difference being that White Dolphin's outer reach crossed the sea: by the 8th, around 42,000 households in the Amami region of Kyushu, Japan and more than 13,000 households in Okinawa, totaling more than 50,000 households, had lost power due to the typhoon.

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The National Flood-Control Headquarters' Response Matrix — 12 Measures and a Four-Tier Cascade

On August 8, the National Flood Control Headquarters (NFCH) and the Ministry of Emergency Management launched a new response matrix against White Dolphin: a Class IV flood-control and typhoon-prevention response for Jiangsu and Anhui, maintained a Class III response for Zhejiang and Fujian, and kept a Class IV flood-control response for Heilongjiang; working groups were on the way to Zhejiang and Fujian to assist and direct. The consultative assessment showed White Dolphin was expected to make landfall on the night of the 9th to the morning of the 10th along the coast from Zhejiang to northern Fujian, with strong landfall winds, abundant moisture, a wide footprint, and the possibility of slow movement after landfall, leading to long-lasting heavy rainfall and high extremity and disaster-causing potential.

Compared with previous typhoons, the deployment list this time was longer. The National Flood Control Office issued a notice the same day demanding refinement and implementation of "12 typhoon-prevention measures": comprehensively relocate all offshore workers; hold the line on reservoir safety; watch closely mountain gullies, narrow river channels, cliff-and-slope-adjacent areas; strengthen safety management at non-formal scenic spots and construction sites; ensure safety in tourism and transport; do a good job in flood prevention for rivers such as the Huaihe; coordinate preparation for the use of flood-detention areas; strictly guard against the typhoon's "trailing effect"; pre-position rescue forces in advance; dispatch professional strength downward to guide and assist grassroots work; strengthen public-opinion guidance; and safeguard people's lives and property.

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The Night Before Landfall — Class I Response, Eye Closure and a Tangled Track

From late afternoon into the night of August 8, White Dolphin's emergency-response level was simultaneously raised in China and Japan. Zhejiang's provincial headquarters raised its typhoon-prevention response to Class I at 20:00; Wenzhou followed at 18:00; the Ministry of Water Resources escalated Zhejiang's flood-defense response from Class IV to Class III, and issued a red mountain-flood warning for 23 contiguous counties/districts in Zhejiang. Ningbo Metro announced the entire network would suspend operations starting August 9, and Shanghai ferry services suspended all routes — the transport system began cutting ahead of time.

Japan's side also entered evacuation mode. Affected by White Dolphin, more than 175,000 residents in Okinawa and Kagoshima had received evacuation orders, covering 82,750 households; the typhoon had injured 6 people, damaged at least 18 houses and cut power to around 55,000 households. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a 24-hour rainfall forecast of 120 mm for parts of southern Kyushu.

On the public-perception layer, one recurring misconception deserves to be recorded: typhoon "eye closure" does not equal weakening. The National Meteorological Center explained that White Dolphin had undergone five eyewall replacements in its first 10 days; dry air intrusion caused the eye to blur and the hole to disappear — the core wind dropped slightly, but the wind-and-rain footprint grew by "spreading the pancake," with the Force 7 and Force 10 wind circles continuing to expand and spiral rain bands stretching over a thousand kilometers. Meanwhile, chief forecaster Zhang Tao used "tangled" to describe White Dolphin's track: from 23:00 on August 7 to 06:00 on August 8, the typhoon went south, east, north, then west — its track directed jointly by the push-pull of the subtropical high, the tug of the westerly trough, and a Fujiwhara-like twin-typhoon interaction with "Whale" (Jingyu).

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The Final Countdown to Landfall — Severe-Typhoon Force and 400 mm Extreme Rainfall

By the morning of August 9, White Dolphin's landfall window had narrowed to within 24 hours. At 07:00 its center sat about 290 km due east of Wenzhou, with the Force 10 wind circle already touching parts of Taizhou, and the Force 7 circle affecting Zhoushan, Ningbo, Taizhou and Wenzhou; the maximum sustained winds near the center were Force 14 (45 m/s), holding at severe-typhoon strength — after briefly strengthening overnight to 48 m/s, there was a slight pullback by 05:00. The cloud-system diameter exceeded 1,200 km; the NMC forecast landfall between Zhoushan in Zhejiang and Fuding in Fujian during the night of the 9th to the morning of the 10th, at typhoon or severe-typhoon strength (38–45 m/s, Force 13–14).

The extremity of the rainfall deserves even more attention than the wind. The NMC's 06:00 orange typhoon warning continued: White Dolphin's whole circulation diameter exceeded 1,000 km; though it had not landed yesterday, the wind-and-rain weather already unfolded ahead of it; today Zhejiang, Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, southern Anhui, northern Fujian, and Taiwan would generally see heavy to torrential rain, with eastern Zhejiang coast under an extreme-rainstorm warning — local 24-hour rainfall reaching 400 mm or more, close to the single-point extreme during the Hongxia period. The cloud-system reach also extended westward to Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Taiwan, all of which showed rain echoes.

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The Full Pre-Landfall Upgrade — Red Warning, Double-Red Sea Warnings, and a Whole-Chain Standstill

From morning to early afternoon on the 9th, White Dolphin's warning system completed a full upgrade within hours, with the impact spreading from meteorological forecasts to transport, sporting events and city operations. The NMC issued a red typhoon warning at 10:00 on the 9th: White Dolphin's center sat about 215 km east of Wenzhou (27.9°N, 122.9°E), with maximum sustained winds near the center of Force 14 (45 m/s) and a Force 7 wind-circle radius of 300–450 km; it was forecast to make landfall between Sanmen in Zhejiang and Fuding in Fujian from late evening on the 9th to the early morning of the 10th, at Force 13–14. NMC chief forecaster Dong Lin highlighted three notable features at a media briefing: long-haul oceanic genesis — generated near the International Date Line, track length over 6,000 km, lifetime over 15 days (more than three times a typical typhoon); potentially the first typhoon on record to make landfall in China at tropical-storm-or-higher intensity that originated from the Date Line — explosive intensification — strengthening to super typhoon over 48 hours with a peak of 65 m/s, sustained super-typhoon status for 5.5 days, the second-strongest this year; vast circulation — Force 7 radius 420–450 km, circulation diameter 1,300 km.

In parallel, the National Marine Forecasting Center issued storm-surge and sea-wave double-red warnings: the East China Sea would see 7–12 m wild waves to wild surges; Zhejiang's near-shore waters would see 5–8 m huge waves to wild surges (red), Shanghai's near-shore 3.5–5.5 m (orange); storm surge along the coast from Nantong in Jiangsu to Ningbo in Zhejiang would rise 100–250 cm, from Taizhou to Wenzhou 180–350 cm, with red storm-surge warnings for Ningbo, Zhoushan and Taizhou. At 08:10, the CMA escalated its emergency response for typhoon, rainstorm, and severe convection from Level 3 to Level 2.

The duration of strong wind and rain was singled out. Qian Hao, chief forecaster at the Zhejiang Provincial Meteorological Observatory, noted that on the 9th and during the day of the 10th most of Zhejiang would see heavy to torrential rain with localized extremes, including 300–500 mm and isolated points above 800 mm in Taizhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou, with the maximum hourly rainfall intensity at 80–100 mm. The heavy rain would persist until the 11th, and combined with the storm surge, the risk of seawater backflow and urban flooding needed to be prevented. NMC chief forecator Fang Chong looked past landfall: White Dolphin's remnant vortex was projected to push north on the 11th–12th; if it stalled at the junction of Henan, Hubei and Anhui, it would bring heavy to torrential rain to the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, with localized extremes in southern Hebei — whether it would reach the strength of 2023's Doksuri remains uncertain.

Shanghai was outside the forecast landfall zone but inside the danger semicircle. By China Weather's analysis, the right-front quadrant of White Dolphin's motion direction was the danger semicircle, and Shanghai sat inside it — over the previous three hours it had been under widespread heavy rain, with Force 9 winds along rivers and the coast; cumulative rainfall could exceed 150 mm, isolated stations 250 mm or more. Affected by this, Shanghai's long-distance bus station temporarily shut down on August 9 — all long-distance passenger services city-wide in Shanghai were suspended; Nanchang Railway suspended parts of certain trains on the Quzhou–Ningde, Hangzhou–Shenzhen (Fuding–Fuzhou South), Shanghai–Kunming, and Fengdu lines, while adding 92 services to re-route capacity to areas outside the storm's wind circles.

The cancellation of a sporting event was another side. The Shanghai Stars Cup men's final (China U-17 vs Arsenal U-17) — originally set for 14:30 on August 9 at the Shanghai Pudong Football Field — was first shifted to a behind-closed-doors arrangement because of the typhoon, then formally cancelled without a re-scheduled fixture, with the organizing committee naming both teams co-champions and refunding all ticket revenue in full. From "no spectators" to "the whole match cancelled" took less than two hours.

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The Last Half-Day of the Countdown — Shanghai's Dispatch, Tornado Potential, and the North China Rain to Come

By the afternoon of August 9, the landfall window narrowed from "the evening to the early hours of the 10th" to "around this evening." People's Daily at 15:27 reported: the typhoon would make landfall along the coast from Yuhuan to Wenling around evening (typhoon or severe-typhoon strength, Forces 12–14). Guancha at 14:15 gave a landfall time of 16:00–20:00, between Wenling and Rui'an in Zhejiang (Force 13–14), and explicitly ruled out White Dolphin stalling near Shanghai; after landfall intensity would clearly weaken, the storm would move west-northwest along the southern Zhejiang mountains and enter Jiangxi on the 10th daytime.

Shanghai elevated defensive actions to the highest level. At 15:21, Mayor Gong Zheng chaired a video-dispatch meeting on typhoon-prevention work, demanding adherence to the "four earlies / five mosts" principle and the goal of "zero deaths, fewer injuries, smaller losses," with school, work, transport, ferry, park and business closures to be taken decisively based on warning information; after the typhoon, recovery should be pushed "as fast as possible," with rapid repair of damaged power, water, transport and communications infrastructure. Real-time data as of 10:00 on the 9th was already quite extreme: average rainfall across the city 56.3 mm, central urban area 75.6 mm, with a maximum of 137.0 mm at Tangqiao Sub-district in Pudong, hourly peak of 81.5 mm; on the wind side, 125 sub-districts (55.8%) had exceeded Force 7, with Pudong's Zhujiao Town peak at Force 11 (29.6 m/s). The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau also warned of tornado potential over the next two days and said it would strengthen monitoring and timely warnings.

White Dolphin's rain was still heading north. The Beijing Meteorological Observatory forecast at 15:15: from the night of August 11 to the 15th there would be heavy rain in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, with a long cumulative-rainfall period; from the night of the 11th to the 15th Beijing would see heavy to torrential rain, with extreme rain in mountainous and southern parts, intensifying from the night of the 11th — that night to the following night Beijing would have heavy rain, with localized torrential storms. Risks of urban waterlogging, geological disasters, mountain flash floods and small-to-medium river floods overlap. This closes the timeline with Fang Chong's earlier judgment (remnant vortex moving north on the 11th–12th; stall at Henan/Hubei/Anhui border would mean heavy rain in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei): landfall is only Act I; the remnant's rain is still on the way.

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Full Landfall Record — Two Landfalls, 215,600 People Evacuated, and the Yong River's No. 1 Flood

From afternoon to night on August 9, "White Dolphin" completed the full sequence from first landfall to second. Around 17:30, the center made landfall on the coast of Kanmen Sub-district, Yuhuan City, Taizhou, Zhejiang, with maximum sustained winds near the center of Force 14 (42 m/s) and a central minimum pressure of 945 hPa — the same landfall point as Typhoon Bawei; around 18:40 it made a second landfall on the coast of Wengyang Sub-district, Yueqing City, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, with maximum winds of Force 13 (38 m/s) and central pressure of 950 hPa.

This typhoon itself set a record: from formation at 14:00 on July 27 to landfall on the 9th, it traveled at sea for 14 days with a track length over 6,000 km, becoming the typhoon on record in China whose generation point was farthest east among those that made landfall. Along the way it underwent multiple eyewall replacements and at its peak had a circulation diameter over 1,300 km. NMC chief forecaster Xu Yinglong noted that, compared with "Bawei," "White Dolphin" might have stronger local winds and more intense, wider rain, with extreme local-rainfall potential.

Defense-side numbers: by 17:00 on the 9th, Shanghai had evacuated and resettled 215,600 people from risk areas; Zhejiang currently had 294 active warnings, with most of the province under heavy to torrential rain, locally extreme in Taizhou, Ningbo and northern Wenzhou; Ningbo Lishe International Airport suspended all operations for the day, 100 A-grade scenic spots in Taizhou closed, Shanghai citywide ferry services suspended; Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport cancelled a total of 388 inbound and outbound flights. On the water-resources side, at 19:05 the Yong River Yaojiang Dazzhan station rose to 1.80 m, triggering a 2026 No. 1 flood on the Yong River, and the Ministry of Water Resources activated its Class III flood-defense emergency response.

Taiwan-side impact: by 14:00 on the 9th, Taiwan had logged 632 disaster incidents and 6 injuries; Fuxing District in Taoyuan and Lienchiang County suspended work and classes; at Keelung Port's west bank containers were blown over by strong winds and crashed into gantry cranes; Taipei had received 261 disaster reports by 16:30.

Secondary online mood: a 32-year-old man hoping to gain attention downloaded another person's July 18 flood video and re-edited it to claim "Yangpu District is flooding again today" — Shanghai police imposed administrative detention for fabricating facts and disturbing public order, while also warning residents not to forward unverified information.

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After White Dolphin's Landfall — Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Red Rainstorm Warning and Rumor Control (2026-08-10)

On the evening of August 9, White Dolphin landed successively in Yuhuan, Taizhou, Zhejiang (Force 14, 42 m/s) and Yueqing, Wenzhou (Force 13, 38 m/s) — the second strong typhoon to affect China's eastern coast this year. Compared with Bawei, White Dolphin's track was more extreme: the pre-landfall path exceeded 6,000 km, its lifetime was more than three times that of an ordinary typhoon, setting the record for the easternmost generation point of a typhoon making landfall in China; its cloud system covered the whole eastern China region; as it moved north after landfall, rainfall at least as extreme as at the landfall point was projected — the NMC forecast localized cumulative rainfall over 700 mm in western and northern Henan and southern Hebei.

Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei entered the peak rain period two days after landfall, with the warning chain extending northward from Zhejiang. On the morning of August 10, Beijing issued its second orange rainstorm warning of this summer — Beijing's meteorological agency specifically pointed out that this summer's two orange rainstorm warnings were both tied to typhoon effects: the first on July 9 from Typhoon "Bawei," the second on August 10 from "White Dolphin" moving deep inland and affecting Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei. Five districts (Tongzhou, Daxing, Fangshan, Mentougou and the Economic-Technological Development Area) were escalated to red warnings, and the city planned to activate a Class II flood-control emergency response on the 11th. At the national level, the National Commission for Disaster Reduction and the Ministry of Emergency Management activated a Class IV national disaster-relief emergency response to address White Dolphin's severe impact in Zhejiang, and dispatched working groups to verify disaster losses and guide resettlement.

Rumor control became a parallel strand in this typhoon response. On August 10 the Ministry of Public Security's Cyber Security Bureau published 15 typical cases of online rumors related to floods and disasters, many of which used AI tools: one netizen used AI to alter and spread a Shenzhen municipal government "notice on safe delivery during typhoon weather," another used AI to generate fake "school, business and work suspension" notices, and another cut and spliced footage from a US hurricane to claim it showed domestic typhoon damage. Two prior batches of flood-related rumors had been published in July; this was the third — AI tools are emerging as a new production engine for disaster-related rumors, and the public-security ministry's "Clean Net 2026" campaign has shifted its focus toward AI-generated content.

Record-Breaking Rainfall and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Red-Warning Escalation — White Dolphin's Inland Deep Dive (2026-08-10)

White Dolphin did not clean up quickly after landfall, instead producing a set of record-breaking rainfall data across eastern China. As of 11:00 on August 10, 9 of the top 10 locations by 24-hour rainfall were in Zhejiang, with Wenling's 24-hour total at 393.8 mm. Among national-level meteorological stations, Shanghai Xujiahui reached 316.1 mm, Zhejiang Wenling 425 mm, Sanmen 367.8 mm — seven stations saw extreme rainstorm-class events; six stations (Wenling, Sanmen, Jingning, Xujiahui, Pudong, Qingpu) broke the single-day rainfall record since 1951, and 15 stations in Shanghai and Zhejiang broke the August single-day rainfall record. The wind extremes were equally extreme: at Xiandie in Yuhuan, Taizhou, Zhejiang and at Beize Island in Linhai, gusts exceeded 60 m/s — Force 17.

The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei warnings completed a relay of escalation on the morning of the 10th. At 10:00 Beijing issued its second summer-orange rainstorm warning; five districts (Tongzhou, Daxing, Fangshan, Mentougou and the Economic-Technological Development Area) escalated to red; by noon the red zone expanded to seven districts, with Huairou and Fengtai joining. The city planned to activate a Class II flood-control emergency response on the 11th; the Water Authority and the Meteorological Bureau issued a citywide orange warning for mountain-flood disaster risk — Fangshan, Mentougou and Pinggu marked red. NMC judged that when White Dolphin's circulation encountered cold air moving north, North China faced the possibility of "Doksuri-style" extreme heavy rain; the piedmont of Mount Tai, Taihang and Yanshan would see even heavier rain due to topographic lift, with localized cumulative rainfall over 700 mm in western and northern Henan and southern Hebei.

Transport and societal impacts appeared in parallel. Hangzhou–Shenzhen Railway canceled some services in the Hangzhou direction, parts of the Shanghai–Kunming high-speed rail toward Hangzhou and Shanghai were suspended, and 12306 issued automatic refunds. At Huangshan scenic area, large numbers of tourists were stranded after the typhoon, with cable cars shut down and some waiting several hours in the rain; the scenic area suspended opening on August 9 and organized orderly evacuation in batches.

White Dolphin's Post-Storm Ledger — The Dual-Channel 200 million and 180 million RMB (2026-08-10)

Within 48 hours of White Dolphin's Zhejiang landfall, the dual-channel disaster-relief funding fully kicked in. The NDRC urgently allocated 200 million RMB from the central budget to support emergency recovery in Zhejiang, prioritizing damaged roads, water infrastructure, schools and hospitals. The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Emergency Management urgently pre-allocated 180 million RMB in central natural-disaster relief funds — of which 120 million RMB supports flood-control and disaster-relief in five provinces (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian and Jiangxi), with additional funding for northwest China drought relief.

The disaster's magnitude is laid out in rainfall numbers: 17 Zhejiang stations broke the 500 mm mark; Shanghai Xujiahui's rainfall persisted from 00:00 on the 9th to 16:00 on the 10th (40 hours), with a 48-hour cumulative total of 397.6 mm; 9 of the top 10 locations by 24-hour rainfall were in Zhejiang, with Wenling's 24-hour total at 393.8 mm. The Ministry of Water Resources activated a Class IV flood-defense emergency response for Hubei, Henan, Hebei and Shandong — White Dolphin's remnant circulation was cooperating with northern cold air and the eastern typhoon "Canhong" via a moisture relay, pushing the rain band toward North China.

Zhai Liang, chief forecaster at the Beijing Meteorological Observatory, made a remark worth recording: the synoptic situation of this event is similar to 2023's "Doksuri" but with important differences — "this event has a more complex circulation. Beyond the typhoon moving north, there's also a western trough, plus the eastern Canhong feeding moisture." Zhengzhou had activated a Class III flood-control emergency response at 14:30 on August 10, with localized rainfall reaching 500 mm or more.

Weakening Does Not Mean End — White Dolphin's Remnant Relay and Beijing's City-Level Response (2026-08-11)

On August 11, White Dolphin entered a weakening phase, but its influence persisted in a more insidious way: the remnant vortex combined with cold air and the eastern typhoon "Canhong" via a moisture relay, pushing a heavy rain band toward Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei.

By 11:00 on the 11th, Typhoon "White Dolphin" had weakened to a tropical depression, located in Huanggang, Hubei — more than 40 hours after landfall. NMC chief forecaster Zhang Fanghua made the point explicit: a weakening circulation does not equal an end to impact. The key variable here is "Canhong": only at tropical-storm intensity, but with a very large circulation, its northern-side easterly flow clearly persists, transporting warm moisture from the western Pacific toward China, linking up with the easterly flow on White Dolphin's northern side — playing a key role in maintaining White Dolphin's circulation and driving heavy rain across eastern, central and northern China.

The national-level response completed a cross-tier relay on the same morning. At 09:00 on August 11, the National Flood Control Headquarters and the Ministry of Emergency Management activated a Class IV flood-control emergency response for Beijing and Tianjin — the NMC at 06:00 continued to issue the orange rainstorm warning, forecasting heavy rain or torrential rain over the next three days in central-southern Beijing, Tianjin and elsewhere. Beijing itself launched a higher-grade city-level response the same day: at 09:00 the city activated a Class II flood-control emergency response, with over 23,000 transport-emergency personnel, more than 2,000 mechanical vehicles and assorted flood-control supplies ready; during the evening peak on the 11th, and all day on the 12th and 13th, bus-only lanes were temporarily opened to social vehicles; 77 higher-elevation roads were identified as emergency-avoidance parking corridors, with no parking-violation penalties issued between 18:00 and the lifting of the rainstorm warning; 182 parking lots were opened as flood-emergency evacuation parking and can be located via the "Beijing Static Transport Shared Parking" mini-program.

What differentiated this round of Beijing's response from the previous two was its granularity: from "opening bus-only lanes" to "designating parking-free roads" to "one-tap parking-lot navigation," urban emergency measures are starting to fit into the cracks of citizens' daily travel — bus-only lanes are a time resource, evacuation roads a space resource, the mini-program an information channel. All three point to the same goal: on a heavy-rain day, every person who has to go out should know where to park and how to get home.

On the same day, train and flight rebooking rules were synthesized into an "extreme-weather playbook": when a train is suspended due to weather, 12306 will auto-refund within 5 days of the original departure date, or the passenger can process at any station window within 30 days of the suspension notice; in a multi-leg ticket, only the affected leg auto-refunds — to cancel the whole journey before departure, the multi-leg criteria must be met. When a flight is canceled or delayed by extreme weather, the ticket can be refunded or rebooked for free once if eligible, but must use the "involuntary refund/rebook" channel to avoid fees; meals and lodging are generally the traveler's own expense, and travelers with delay insurance may claim compensation with a flight-change certificate.

White Dolphin Meets Cold Air — Rain Band Pushes North, and Taihu Lake Issues No. 1 Flood (2026-08-11)

During the day on August 11, White Dolphin's remnant system met a key opponent: cold air. China Weather Network's analysis showed that the typhoon's northern cloud band was developing strongly while the northwest cold-air cloud band, oriented southwest–northeast, was approaching — their merging triggered heavier precipitation with a certain extremity in localized areas.

The NMC forecast: over the next three days, affected jointly by White Dolphin and the westerly trough, Zhejiang east, Jiangsu west and south, Anhui, Hubei, northern Hunan, Henan, western Shandong, central-southern Hebei, southeastern Shanxi, central-southern Beijing, central-western Inner Mongolia and other places would see heavy to torrential rain, with localized extremes; cumulative rainfall of 100–200 mm in the above areas, 300–400 mm in Henan and western Shandong, isolated points above 500 mm.

Henan was the front line of this rain band. Zhoukou City had begun raining from midday on the 10th; the municipal flood-control and drought-relief headquarters activated a Class IV flood-control emergency response that evening; as of 08:00 this morning the city's average rainfall was 51.3 mm. Local water-resources departments had proactively opened sluice gates along the main rivers running through the urban area to drop water levels and accept urban drainage.

Taihu Lake was another observation point. Affected by White Dolphin's heavy rain, at 11:25 on August 11 the lake's water level rose to the warning line of 3.80 m, designated as "Taihu Lake 2026 No. 1 Flood." The Ministry of Water Resources activated in advance a Class III flood-defense response for Zhejiang and a Class IV response for Shanghai and Jiangsu, dispatching four working groups to the front line. The Taihu Basin Authority advanced the schedule for the riverside coastal sluice pumps to increase discharge, pre-lowering Taihu's and the river-network water levels, and after the network levels fell would time the discharge of Taihu's flood in a staggered way.

Beijing remained in pre-storm status. The Fangshan Blue Sky Rescue team compiled four avoidance guidelines based on years of flood-season experience: if a vehicle is water-stalled, do not re-start the engine — open doors and windows immediately to escape; during a red rainstorm warning do not enter mountainous areas, stay away from rivers; ground-floor residents should pre-block doors and windows and prepare sandbags; rain stopping does not mean risk ends — for 72 hours after the rain, mountain geological hazards and hidden river flows remain at high risk. Tongzhou had issued a red rainstorm warning earlier, and Majuqiao Town had compiled a list of 40 flood-prone points to remind residents to detour.

One weather detail worth recording: the typhoon–tornado association. On the evening of August 10, Taizhou in Zhejiang, just hit by White Dolphin, issued a tornado-risk advisory — small supercell storms often form on the typhoon's outer spiral rain bands, and when they touch the ground they spawn tornadoes; in 2018 Typhoon "Mangkhut" spawned an EF2 tornado in Guangdong, and in 2022 Typhoon "Chaba" spawned at least three tornadoes during and after landfall.

White Dolphin's Shockwave — Travel Standstill and August's Typhoon Cluster (2026-08-12)

On August 12, the impact of White Dolphin's remnant cloud system on Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei entered its execution phase, with the transport system the first to deliver the standstill bill: Beijing Railway planned to suspend 123 trains, civil aviation planned to cancel 57 flights, and on August 12 the "eight stations / two airports" handled a total of 1.3842 million inbound and outbound Beijing passengers (railway arrivals-departures 992,800; civil-aviation inbound-outbound 391,400).

Beijing West Station concentrated 2,500 flood-control sandbags and warning signs at high-risk rainwater-backflow zones; Beijing South Station deployed more than 3,000 sandbags at underground entrances and exits; across Beijing's "eight stations and two airports," a total of more than 120,000 support materials and facility items were deployed, including roughly 50,000 cleaning tools and water-blocking facilities (brooms, water pushers, sandbags, water barriers), while nearly 600 large pieces of equipment (drainage generator units, rescue transporters, wash-and-suction machines, vehicle-moving robots, etc.) were placed. Beijing South Station and the meteorological and railway authorities established a "minute-level" information-sharing mechanism. Stations collectively distributed more than 20,000 disposable raincoats to passengers, and 23 F&B outlets at Capital Airport ensured 24-hour operations.

The meteorological explanation was completed the same day: White Dolphin's main cloud system was still near Zhengzhou; the rainfall in Beijing was amplified by the outer remnant cloud system of "White Dolphin," while the high-altitude trough cloud system had merged with White Dolphin's outer remnant cloud system, and "Canhong" was also feeding moisture to Beijing — equivalent to three systems converging over the Beijing area into a north-south-oriented cloud band with slow movement, leading to prolonged rainfall. From 12:00 on August 11 to 10:00 on the 12th, the city's average rainfall was 28.7 mm, with a maximum of 202.9 mm in Mujiayu, Miyun; by 10:00 on the 12th a total of 32 stations citywide had cumulative rainfall exceeding 100 mm, and 188 stations had exceeded 50 mm.

On the same day, the NMC announced the formation of the year's 17th named typhoon, "Langka" (forecast no impact on China), and the 16th named typhoon, "Bisu," had weakened to a tropical depression. China Weather Network provided a longitudinal anchor: typhoons can form in the western Pacific and South China Sea year-round, with July–September as the active season; August in China averages 5.63 typhoon formations and 2.3 landfalls; the most prolific August on record was 1960, with 14. The National Climate Center had previously forecast that under a strong-to-super El Niño, August would see above-normal heavy rain, heat and typhoons in China.