Storm slams Shanghai as locals stay at home

Typhoon Haikui battered Shanghai Wednesday with gale-force winds and torrential rains, disrupting traffic and grounding flights after officials raised the city's typhoon warning to its highest level Wednesday morning.

Weather authorities raised the typhoon warning level to red at 11:30 am, making Haikui one of the strongest storms to hit the city in seven years.

A 57-year-old local woman was killed by fallen glasses in suburban Baoshan district after the typhoon landed in the town of Hepu in northern Zhejiang Province at 3 am Wednesday.

Officers arrived at the scene at 7 am and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene, said Zeng Ni, a press officer of Baoshan police. "The victim was hit by flying glass and debris at a residential complex," she told the Global Times. "An initial investigation showed that the glass fell from a neighbor's window."

In a separate case, a collapsed factory wall killed one person and injured three others in an adjacent dormitory in Songjiang district at 11 am.

Batten down the hatches

The typhoon was heading toward Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, early Wednesday, but the storm was already buffeting Shanghai with gales that exceeded 105 kilometers per hour in the city's southernmost districts of Jinshan and Fengxian, according to the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau. The city center endured winds of up to 90 kilometers per hour between 12 pm to 2 pm.

The Shanghai Municipal Flood Control Administration said more than 6,300 vessels sought shelter in the city's three main ports, though no crew members were reported injured as of 3 pm Wednesday.

Torrential rains deluged the city Wednesday, drenching Fengxian district with 100.8 millimeters of rain from midnight to 2 pm, weather authorities said. At People's Square in downtown Huangpu district, the storm dumped 60.8 millimeters of rain in a single hour between 2 pm and 3 pm.

Luxun Park in downtown Hongkou district saw 229.3 millimeters of precipitation in a 24-hour period starting from 8 pm Tuesday.

Heavy rain flooded roads and low-lying areas across the city. The local government evacuated 374,000 people from high-risk areas overnight, and more than 38 incidents of flooding were reported as of 4 pm Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of local residents stayed home as Haikui approached the city and the local government encouraged employers to give residents the day off.

Haikui was downgraded to a tropical storm at 9 pm Wednesday, but the National Meteorological Center predicted that heavy rain will continue to affect the Yangtze River Delta Region through Friday.