A Monster Storm Just Came Ashore in China

Typhoon Dolphin slammed into China’s east coast and forced more than one million people to move out of harm’s way.

Quick Take

The storm made landfall near Yuhuan in Zhejiang, according to China’s meteorological authorities and Reuters.
Officials said the storm brought maximum sustained winds of 42 meters per second, or 151 kilometers per hour.
News outlets reported huge travel disruptions, with more than 1,000 flights canceled and some rail service suspended.
Forecasters warned of flooding and landslides as heavy rain moved inland after landfall.

Storm Hits the Eastern Coast

Typhoon Dolphin made landfall near Yuhuan in eastern Zhejiang province on Sunday afternoon, and Chinese meteorological authorities said the storm reached the coast around 5:30 p.m. Reuters reported that Dolphin was the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit China this year, and that it arrived with torrential rain, strong winds, and warnings for flooding and landslides. Bloomberg reported a second landfall later along the Zhejiang coast, showing how the storm’s exact first contact point was still being described in slightly different ways by news outlets.

The public impact was fast and broad. Reuters said more than one million people had been evacuated, while Bloomberg said more than 1,000 flights were canceled and some rail services were suspended. Al Jazeera reported even higher flight disruption totals and said about 500,000 people had been evacuated by the time it published, which shows the kind of count drift that often appears during breaking disaster coverage. The core fact did not change: eastern China was hit hard and local transport systems were strained.

Why the Landfall Matters

The storm matters because it hit a densely populated stretch of China’s coast and quickly turned into a flood threat inland. Reuters said the wind speed at landfall reached 42 meters per second, a level equal to a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. France 24 and other outlets repeated the same basic landfall report, which adds weight to the conclusion that the event was real and severe, even if outlets used slightly different place names for the coastline.

That difference in wording is common in fast-moving weather coverage. One outlet said Yuhuan, another said Taizhou, and Xinhua later reported a second landfall at Yueqing. Those differences do not undermine the main story. They show how live storm reports often rely on rapid official updates rather than one clean, final map at the moment landfall happens. The practical result for residents was the same: evacuations, cancellations, and warnings to stay away from dangerous water and weak structures.

What Officials and Forecasters Saw Coming

Officials had been warning about Dolphin before it reached shore. Reuters reported the day before that China had shut ports and halted ferries ahead of the storm’s arrival, while China’s National Meteorological Center had already forecast landfall along the eastern coast between Shanghai and Fujian province. That early warning matters because it shows the evacuations were not a last-second panic move. Authorities were tracking the storm for days and trying to clear people out before the worst wind and rain arrived.

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That preparedness did not stop the disruption, but it likely reduced worse damage. Xinhua said east China provinces had raised emergency responses before landfall, and the National Meteorological Center later described the storm as the thirteenth typhoon of the year. For readers frustrated by weak government planning, the broader lesson is straightforward: strong storm warnings only help when officials act early and the public is moved before roads, ports, and airports go down. Here, the evacuation numbers suggest those warnings were taken seriously.