Heavy rain to soak over half of China

Children in Yantai, Shandong province, play with water to escape the summer heat on Saturday. TANG KE/FOR CHINA DAILY

BEIJING — While the upper reach of Yangtze River basin will continue to be plagued by torrential rain in the following three days, people in the middle and lower reaches of the basin will be tortured by high temperature of more than 35 C in the coming week, forecasters said.

Since the flood season started on May 1, precipitation in Sichuan, suited in the upper reaches of Yangtze, has been 40 percent above the average, according to local flood control authorities. It seems that the flood control situation in the province remains grim.

According to the National Meteorological Center, rainstorms in Guangyuan and Mianyang cities in the province brought precipitation of up to 257 millimeters on Saturday and rain band will keep staying in the province at least till Wednesday. The rainfall also affected some areas in neighboring Gansu province.

While rainfalls struck only a small area in the country on Sunday, rain-hit area will expand to more than half of the country from Monday to Wednesday. Sichuan, however, will be among the most severely hit most of the time.

From 8 am Sunday to 8 am Monday, some areas in the province in the western part of Sichuan Basin are expected to receive rainfall of up to 200 millimeters. Precipitation in the following 24 hours in the province will decrease but will be still up to 130 millimeters in the affected areas, according to the center.

The continuous rainfall has resulted in floods in Yangtze River and some of its major tributaries. On Saturday, almost 100,000 residents were temporarily evacuated as a flood peak passed the city proper of Chongqing municipality, located also in upper reach of Yangtze.

Water levels in the Jialing and Yangtze rivers exceeded the warning levels by 5.92 meters and 3.78 meters, respectively, as flood peaks passed the city, said local flood control authorities. The municipality has coordinated multiple dams, including Three Georges, to discharge flood water.

The torrential rain in Sichuan and Gansu had forced almost 130,000 people to be evacuated and had resulted in direct economic loss of nearly 3.9 billion yuan ($583 million) as of 10 am Thursday. While 15 people were killed, four remained missing, said the Ministry of Emergency Management on Saturday.

The ministry also said it has sent emergency relief supplies to severely flooded areas in the two provinces Friday, including 8,000 tents, 8,000 folding beds, and 50,000 coats and blankets.

Heavy rainstorms also triggered a landslide on Thursday in Nanyu village, Zhouqu County in Gansu, but no casualties have been reported so far.

The National Meteorological Center has warned of the possible natural disasters caused by the continuous rainfall in the western parts of Sichuan Basin, including floods and mountain torrents.

The center also said some areas in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong provinces, most of which are located in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River, will see high temperature of 35 to 37 C in the following one week.

Some areas in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region will see even higher temperature of up to 39 C during the time, it said.