China's National Meteorological Center reported this Sunday that Typhoon 'Bavi' has weakened to a "severe tropical storm" early this morning, shortly after making landfall, leaving intense torrential rains in its wake over the eastern province of Zhejiang. The region had already carried out massive evacuations of hundreds of thousands of people before the arrival of the system, whose previous passage through the Philippines has caused the death of 17 people in recent days.
'Bavi' will turn northeast over eastern Anhui next Monday, July 13, according to official forecasts, before entering the northern Yellow Sea and gradually evolving into an extratropical cyclone.
However, from Tuesday, July 14, very intense rainfall is expected in the provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shandong, and in areas of the northeast of the country. Some areas of Anhui, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi could register extreme downpours, while strong winds threaten to disrupt maritime traffic, offshore activities, and aquaculture along the entire eastern Chinese coast.
As a preventive measure, this Sunday China's Ministry of Transport raised its emergency response level for heavy rains to Level II and maintained Level III response for typhoons, after the national meteorological service activated an orange alert for storms and a yellow alert for typhoons, according to Bloomberg.
Local authorities indicated in a WeChat post that the storm is expected to reach the latitude of Shanghai on Sunday night. In that statement, the public is urged to check that doors and windows remain tightly closed, not to go outside unless necessary, and to exercise extreme caution due to the possible falling of objects from outside.
For its part, the state-run China Central Television reported that Pudong and Hongqiao airports in Shanghai plan to cancel 653 arrival and departure flights on July 12, representing about 30% of the scheduled operations at both terminals, as a direct consequence of the storm's impact.