A woman sweeps tree branches and leaves outside a shop brought down during the passage of Typhoon Bebinca in Shanghai on September 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Roads and neighbourhoods in Shanghai flooded on Friday (September 20, 2024) as the Chinese megacity was battered by a second typhoon days after it was hit by its strongest storm in 75 years.

Typhoon Pulasan made landfall on Thursday (September 19, 2024) night in the city’s Fengxian district, with a maximum wind speed of 23 metres per second (83 kilometres per hour), according to state-run Xinhua news agency.

The storm “is forecast to gradually weaken as it moves inland”, Xinhua said, though downpours continued in the city on Friday (September 20, 2024) morning.

Videos posted on social media on Friday (September 20, 2024) showed Shanghai residents wading through calf-level water in some neighbourhoods, though no severe damage or casualties have been reported so far.

Parts of Shanghai upgraded their typhoon alert levels as the storm approached the city on Thursday (September 19, 2024).

Pulasan comes days after Typhoon Bebinca wreaked havoc on Monday (September 16, 2024)as the strongest storm to hit the megacity since 1949.

Bebinca felled more than 1,800 trees and left 30,000 households without electricity, with authorities evacuating more than 400,000 people across Shanghai ahead of the storm.

Scientists say climate change driven by greenhouse gas emissions is making extreme weather more frequent and intense.

China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, though its per capita emissions pale in comparison to rival economic power the United States.

A view of an empty street amid heavy rainfall, after Typhoon Bebinca made landfall in Shanghai, China September 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Tens of millions of people in Shanghai and across China’s densely populated east coast hunkered indoors Monday (September 16, 2024) as the strongest storm to hit since 1949 swept in, downing trees and disrupting transport across the region.

Typhoon Bebinca landed early Monday morning in the city’s eastern coastal area, with wind speeds of up to 151 kilometres per hour (94 miles per hour), state media said.

It is the strongest storm to hit Shanghai since Typhoon Gloria in 1949, state broadcaster CCTV said shortly after Bebinca made landfall.

Many businesses were already closed for the Mid-Autumn Festival public holiday, and the city’s 25 million residents have been advised to avoid leaving their homes.

Shanghai’s flood control headquarters told CCTV they had already received dozens of reports of incidents related to the typhoon — mostly fallen trees and billboards.

An uprooted tree completely blocked one road in the city centre, an AFP reporter saw.

Ferocious winds

Xiong Zhuowu, a doctor and resident of the northern Baoshan district, posted a video of a real estate agent’s sign being ripped away onto a roof in his compound.

“I feel quite nervous today, I’m constantly checking what the situation is out the window,” Xiong told AFP.

“The property management found some trees with loose roots downstairs and immediately called me to move my car to prevent the tree hitting it if it fell.”

A government livefeed from Baoshan showed ferocious winds ripping through a line of trees on the riverbank.

Despite the violent downpours and sudden gusts of wind, some were still braving the weather to go about errands.

Resident Wu Yun said she had ventured outside because she had to sort something out at her sales job.

“I think it’s okay, because I also saw a lot of typhoons in the south, so I think Shanghai is okay (compared to them),” she told AFP as she struggled to open her umbrella against the wind.

Branches and fallen bikes littered the road in the city’s former French Concession, as delivery workers and clean-up crews persevered against the driving rain.

Flights grounded

All flights at Shanghai’s two main airports are grounded, and ferry services and some trains have been suspended.

Highways were closed at 1 a.m. local time, and a 40-kilometre (25-mile) per-hour speed limit is in place on roads inside the city.

At rush hour, live video feeds showed Shanghai’s normally jammed roads almost empty of traffic, and its famed skyline obscured by thick fog.

Nine thousand residents have been evacuated from Chongming District, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, authorities said.

CCTV broadcast footage of a reporter by the coast in neighbouring Zhejiang province, where waves pounded the craggy coastline under leaden skies.

“If I step out into [the storm], I can barely speak,” the reporter said.

“You can see that the surface of the sea is just wave after wave, each higher than the last.”

Another typhoon, Yagi, killed at least four people and injured 95 when it passed through China’s southern Hainan island this month, according to national weather authorities.

Bebinca has also passed through Japan and the central and southern Philippines, where falling trees killed six people.

CCTV said Bebinca was expected to move northwest, causing heavy rain and high winds in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces.

China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are driving climate change and making extreme weather more frequent and intense.