Typhoon Muifa pounds eastern China
STORY: Powerful gales and torrential rains battered eastern China on Wednesday evening as Typhoon Muifa made landfall in the port city of Zhoushan.
Local media are calling it the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the region in a decade.
Muifa landed around 8:30 pm local time with maximum wind speeds near 94 miles per hour (151 km per hour), powerful enough to damage homes - topple trees and powerlines.
Shanghai, the nation’s financial and commercial capital, braced for the storm earlier in the day, cancelling trains and flights.
It also shut its numerous outdoor COVID-19 testing sites, in a rare disruption to an entrenched testing regime since a citywide lockdown was lifted in June.
In the eastern province of Zhejiang, more than a million people were relocated ahead of the storm, according to local media.
Authorities there issued a “red warning” for flash floods in several areas, the highest warning level in China’s four-tier typhoon warning system.
Meteorologists in China say the storm was caused by this year's unusually hot weather and high temperatures in the East China Sea.
