Today's Edition
WENZHOU, CHINA (REUTERS)
Typhoon Bavi, the most powerful storm to strike mainland China this year, brought heavy rainfall to the eastern coast on Sunday and lashed densely populated cities with violent winds, testing the country's ability to cope with extreme weather.
Bavi had weakened by Sunday morning to a tropical storm as it pushed inland, but forecasters warned that the France-sized storm system could unleash prolonged and widespread rainfall across eastern and northern China in the coming days.
Nearly 2 million people were evacuated ahead of Bavi's arrival, mostly in Zhejiang province, an economic and technological powerhouse in the world's second-largest economy.
Bavi struck Zhejiang's coastal city of Yuhuan at around 11:20 pm on Saturday before making a second landfall in Yueqing, part of the city of Wenzhou, at around midnight.
More than 1,300 trees fell across Yueqing, with more than 700 of them uprooted entirely, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The deepest flooding reached roughly half the height of a vehicle tire.
Emergency crews on Sunday deployed excavators and chainsaws to clear waterlogged streets littered with fallen trees.
In the city's mountainous north, footage aired by CCTV showed a landslide that sent large boulders tumbling onto a mountain road, while swollen river waters submerged nearby trees.
