Typhoon Dolphin Reaches Beijing After a Million Evacuated
Typhoon Dolphin has brought torrential rain to Beijing after forcing more than a million people from their homes along China’s eastern coast. The capital is braced for as much as a third of its annual rainfall in 24 hours, with fresh evacuations under way and warnings of flooding and landslides. Rail services and flights have been disrupted across the region.
Dolphin is the latest in a run of powerful storms to batter China, where warming seas are making typhoons wetter and more destructive, and the scale of the pre-emptive evacuations reflects hard lessons from deadly floods in recent years. Beijing, far from the coast, rarely takes a direct hit, and the volume of rain forecast has put the low-lying capital and its ageing drainage under severe strain. Authorities have shut schools, halted trains and mobilised rescue teams, wary of a repeat of the flooding that killed dozens in 2023. The economic disruption, from paralysed transport to damaged crops, could be considerable. Watch how Beijing’s defences hold and whether the toll stays low.