Just two weeks after another powerful storm battered southern China, Typhoon Dolphin has swept through the country’s eastern coastal regions, leaving a trail of transportation chaos and persistent flood threats even as its wind speeds drop after making landfall.
The storm came ashore twice along Zhejiang Province’s coastline on Sunday, August 9 2026, and had steadily lost intensity by the following day, according to China’s National Meteorological Centre (NMC). By Monday morning, the agency had downgraded the typhoon alert to its lowest severity level, but issued a urgent advisory that heavy downpours would continue to drench large swathes of eastern and central China for another 24 hours.
The elevated risks from lingering rainfall prompted state broadcaster CCTV to report that authorities had activated the highest possible flash flood warning for multiple areas in eastern and southern Zhejiang. Northern parts of the country are also bracing for extreme weather this week: five Beijing districts activated red heavy rain alerts on Monday, with official warnings highlighting elevated risks of landslides and urban flooding.
In Shanghai, China’s leading financial hub, the storm’s impact on travel has been severe. The city’s two major commercial airports reported that a total of 943 scheduled flights were scrapped on Monday, while most local public transit services including regional train lines were temporarily suspended. Adjacent Zhejiang has seen a uneven recovery: Hangzhou, the provincial capital, restored suspended subway services by Monday morning, while Ningbo International Airport only cleared for a resumption of flight operations starting at midday local time. Airport officials cautioned that many services would remain disrupted, as residual storm damage and unstable weather conditions have not fully abated.
Over the weekend, when Typhoon Dolphin was at its peak strength, it triggered a top-tier national emergency alert, forced more than 1,000 flight cancellations across the region and pushed authorities to evacuate tens of thousands of residents from high-risk coastal and low-lying areas.
This storm marks the latest in a string of extreme weather events to hit China in 2026. It comes just 14 days after Typhoon Noul made landfall in southern Guangdong Province, which officials labeled the strongest storm to hit the country so far this year. Last month, Typhoon Maysak caused catastrophic damage across southern and central China: devastating floods triggered by the storm killed 39 people in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, while thunderstorms and gale-force winds in central Hubei Province left 11 more dead and 331 injured.
Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that the rising frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events is a direct consequence of global warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion. As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has also positioned itself as a global leader in renewable energy development, with a formal national policy target to achieve carbon neutrality across its entire economy by 2060.