Typhoon Dolphin made landfall in eastern China on Sunday evening with winds equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane, triggering mass evacuations of more than one million people and canceling over a thousand flights out of Shanghai.
Chinese meteorological authorities confirmed the storm hit near Yuhuan in Zhejiang province at approximately 5:30 p.m. local time, packing maximum sustained winds of 42 meters per second, roughly 94 miles per hour, near its center. The typhoon brought torrential rain across a wide swath of eastern China and prompted immediate warnings of flooding and landslides from multiple government agencies, NBC News reported.
Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province with millions of residents, bore the brunt of the preparation effort. Authorities there relocated more than 900,000 people and opened over 1,000 emergency shelters ahead of Dolphin's arrival. Fujian province, just south of Zhejiang, evacuated another 98,900 people from high-risk areas and raised its typhoon emergency response to Level III, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
Shanghai evacuated at least 30,300 residents and activated its own Level III emergency response. Jiangsu province, north of Shanghai, did the same.
The storm's reach extended well beyond the immediate landfall zone. Shanghai's two major airports, Hongqiao and Pudong, canceled approximately 60 percent of Sunday's expected flights, totaling more than 1,300 cancellations, AP News reported. Flight-tracking data provider VariFlight put the broader Shanghai cancellation figure at roughly 1,500.
Among the stranded was a 42-year-old tourist surnamed Chen, visiting from Guangdong province in southern China. His family's Sunday flight was scrubbed. They rebooked for 10 p.m. Monday, though Chen said he was not sure that flight would depart either.
Chen, at least, was not rattled. He told reporters:
"To us Guangdong people, this typhoon is as ordinary as having a meal and feeling the wind. It's just part of everyday life."
Residents of Guangdong, on China's southern coast, face typhoons regularly. But the scale of disruption from Dolphin stretched far beyond what most travelers could shrug off.
Fujian's maritime authorities suspended all 55 coastal passenger ferry routes in the province. They halted every one of the province's 115 offshore construction projects and moved 290 construction vessels to sheltered waters. Before Dolphin's arrival, Western Pacific storm energy had already been running at double the seasonal average, putting the entire region on high alert.
In Shanghai, the maritime safety administration cleared ships from berths at Yangshan port, one of the world's busiest container terminals, and moved more than 500 small and medium-sized vessels to shelter.
Chinese authorities also moved offshore workers to safety, ordered vessels back to port, and increased inspections at reservoirs, mountain streams, landslide-prone areas, construction sites, and tourist locations ahead of the storm.
Wang Haiping, chief forecaster at China's National Meteorological Center, told state broadcaster CCTV that Dolphin was expected to track westward after landfall before slowing over central and southwestern China and gradually losing strength. That deceleration, Wang said, could prolong heavy rainfall and raise the risk of flooding and landslides, particularly in mountainous areas and along smaller rivers.
The water resources ministry identified the Qiantang, Yong, Jiao, and Shuiyang rivers as likely to see major flooding. Smaller rivers in the hardest-hit areas could rise above warning levels, the ministry said.
Torrential rain was forecast to continue through August 10 across Zhejiang, Shanghai, northern Fujian, northeastern Jiangxi, central and southern Anhui, and much of Jiangsu. Parts of central and eastern Zhejiang alone could receive between 9.8 and 19.7 inches of rain. Authorities warned of a high risk of geological disasters across parts of the province and told residents under a red mountain-torrent warning to follow local evacuation orders immediately.
This typhoon season has already tested China's eastern provinces. Typhoon Bavi struck the same region earlier this year, forcing nearly two million evacuations across multiple provinces and exposing the recurring vulnerability of coastal population centers to powerful storms.
Before making landfall in Zhejiang, Dolphin swept through Okinawa prefecture in Japan. Six people were injured, and power was cut to more than 50,000 buildings across the island chain. The storm shut down Okinawa's main airport and forced hundreds into shelters before continuing westward toward the Chinese coast.
Breitbart reported that before hitting China, Dolphin's outer bands also brought heavy rain to northern Taiwan and intensified monsoon flooding in the Philippines. The storm struck Taizhou in Zhejiang province with winds of 151 kilometers per hour, roughly 93 miles per hour, consistent with the wind readings Chinese meteorological authorities reported at landfall near Yuhuan.
An active Western Pacific storm season has kept forecasters and emergency managers busy across the region. Scientists have warned that a looming super El Niño could further elevate storm activity and intensity in the months ahead.
At the time of publication, no deaths had been reported in China from Typhoon Dolphin, and Chinese authorities had not released a confirmed injury count from the mainland. No official estimate of property or infrastructure damage had been issued. The full scope of the storm's impact, particularly in mountainous areas vulnerable to landslides and along the rivers flagged by the water resources ministry, may not be clear for days.
The evacuation of more than one million people is a massive logistical operation by any measure. Whether it proves sufficient depends on what Dolphin does next as it grinds slowly inland.
When a storm this powerful slows down instead of blowing through, the rain piles up, and so does the risk. The next 48 hours will tell the story that the evacuation orders were written to prevent.
