China evacuates one million from homes as massive storm arrives — SkimNews
SkimNews Take
Dolphin's status as the year's strongest storm, yet still within the range of routine million-person evacuations and thousand-flight cancellations, shows how typhoons have become a recurring operational baseline rather than exceptional shocks for eastern China.
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- Chinese authorities evacuated more than one million people from eastern China, including Shanghai, ahead of Typhoon Dolphin's landfall — with forecasters warning 250–500mm of rain could hit parts of Zhejiang.
- Typhoon Dolphin struck Yuhuan, Zhejiang at 17:30 Sunday with 150 km/h winds before a second landfall in Wenzhou about an hour later, triggering China's highest-level red alert.
- Wenzhou relocated 900,000 residents and opened more than 1,000 emergency shelters, while another 390,000 were evacuated from Taizhou and parts of Shanghai's Disneyland and Legoland closed.
- Nearly 1,000 flights were cancelled in Shanghai on Monday as heavy rain halted transportation across the region.
- State broadcaster CCTV reported Dolphin traveled 6,000 km before landfall — more than three times an average typhoon's lifespan — and had a massive circulation with intense rainfall capacity.
- Chinese police detained two people for spreading typhoon misinformation, including a 60-year-old man who used AI to fabricate a video of someone falling from a building in Shanghai.
- Across the region, Dolphin killed 8 people in the Philippines from monsoon rains, injured 5 elderly in Japan's Okinawa, and pushed Hong Kong to a record-high 36.9°C on Sunday.
Why it matters: With experts linking this season's intensity to a strong El Niño year, forecasters warn torrential rain, flooding, and landslides will continue through Wednesday across seven provinces plus Shanghai. The 6,000 km storm path — triple an average typhoon's lifespan — has already forced 900,000 evacuees into 1,000+ emergency shelters in Wenzhou alone, making this one of China's largest recent mass displacement events.
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