China’s ‘Hawaii’ underwater as tropical storm Trami dumps record rainfall

BEIJING – For a third day, extreme rainfall pounded the southern Chinese province of Hainan, known as China’s “Hawaii”, amid the transit of yet another tropical cyclone, leaving the island half-submerged in a year of record-breaking wet weather.

Cities in Hainan, including Sanya, famed for its palm trees, seafront hotels and sandy beaches, remained waterlogged on Oct 29 due to tropical storm Trami to the south. On Oct 28, Sanya logged 294.9mm of rainfall over a 24-hour window, the most for any day in October since 2000.

Trami made landfall in central Vietnam on Oct 27 after a slow trek across the South China Sea from the Philippines, where it left at least 125 people dead and 28 missing.

While Hainan did not take a direct hit from Trami, the Chinese authorities took no chances, recalling all fishing vessels and evacuating over 50,000 people.

China’s entire eastern coastline has been tested by extreme weather events in 2024, from the violent passage of Super Typhoon Yagi across Hainan in September to the strongest tropical cyclone to strike Shanghai since 1949.

Scientists warn more intense weather is in the offing, spurred by climate change.

“In October, the national average precipitation was 6.3 per cent higher than the same period in previous years,” Dr Jia Xiaolong, a senior official at the National Climate Centre, said at a news conference on Oct 29.

Last week, the water along China’s Bohai Sea inexplicably rose up to 160cm in a matter of hours despite the absence of any wind, leading to a tidal surge that flooded the streets of Tianjin and many cities in the northern provinces of Hebei and Liaoning.

“It’s hard to imagine how much power was needed to push such a large area of ​​sea water to one place,” Mr Fu Cifu, an official at the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Centre, told state-run Xinhua news agency at the time.

China is historically no stranger to floods, but its prevention infrastructure and emergency response planning are coming under increasing pressure as record rains flood populous cities, ravage crops and disrupt local economies.

Amid disaster recovery efforts this summer, the authorities have to provide billions of dollars in additional funding to support reconstruction in multiple regions from the south to the north-east of China.

In July, the country suffered 76.9 billion yuan (S$14.3 billion) in economic losses from natural disasters, with 88 per cent of those losses caused by heavy rains and floods from Typhoon Gaemi, the most for the month of July since 2021. REUTERS