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China: Freak rain floods Hangzhou

Categories: East Asia, China, Disaster, Environment

Hangzhou [1] in eastern China's Zhejiang [2] province is home to the Qiantang River [3], which each year [4] plays host to the world's largest [5] tidal bore [6]; large enough that it occasionally washes bore-watchers away [7] when it comes. This year's bore [8] has come and gone, but the biggest water story in Hangzhou this season is the city's largest rain shower in nearly half a century [9] that left hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes and caused millions of RMB in damage when typhoon Krosa [10] bombed through the China's southeast last weekend.

Netease [11] blogger Zhou Jianguang brings some photos [12] from the streets of downtown Hangzhou dated October 8:

今天水满杭州

Water filled Hangzhou today

到杭州十年了,没遇见过这样的大雨,真是历史罕见,说3个小时下了90cm。6:30起床,一大早去上班,撑伞很困难,行走也不方便,基本上只能保证头部不淋湿。上班路上看到还有几个起电动车的同志,基本上半个轮胎被淹没了。雨太大了,到了单位早饭也不想去吃了,饿了一个上午。中午有幸搭车去吃了一顿饭。一整天都是狂风暴雨,鬼哭狼嚎似的,建筑物也乒乒乓乓的响。老公幸福的很,早上打算出门的时候就接到电话,继续休息一天,后来才知道,去上班的路被淹了。雨大,断电,无聊的他一直给我打电话让我早点回家。到了下午来电了,杭州电视台一直在报道罗莎,他给我电话直播,说什么城里车被淹了,用上求生圈、冲锋船了,有人在马路上游泳了。到了下班时刻,QQ上好友突然发了条消息:你还能回得了家吗?还给我发了不少的照片,车被淹的,路被淹,车库和学校也被淹没了亚。我才意识到,这雨真是下大了。赶紧给家里打了好几个电话,让他们注意安全,家里造房子也中途停止了。

好在很顺利回到了家,吃了晚饭,看看电视,还是满屏幕的抗击台风罗莎的报道,触目惊心:

I've been in Hangzhou for ten years, and I've never seen a rain as big as this, it's really a historical occurrence; they're saying 90 cm came down in just three ours. I got up at 6:30 and left early to go to work, holding the umbrella was really difficult, and so was walking; the best I could do was keep my head from getting soaked. On the way to work I saw a few comrades riding their electric bikes, with pretty much half the tire underwater. The rain was too heavy, and when I got to the office I didn't feel like going out to get breakfast, so I was hungry all morning. At noon I was lucky enough to get a ride to go get something to eat. It was violent wind and rain the whole day, screaming and howling outside like ghosts and wolves, even the building was rattling, ping-pong, ping-pong. Hubby was lucky; just as he was planning to head out this morning he got a call, got another day off, and only found out later that the road to work was underwater. Heavy rain, the power went off, and bored, he kept calling me at work telling me to hurry home early. The power came back on in the afternoon, and Hangzhou TV kept reporting on Krosa, so I got live updates over the phone, that cars were submerged downtown, that people were using live preservers, rubber rafts, that people were swimming down the street. By the time it came to get off work, I suddenly got a burst of messages from friends on QQ [13]: ‘are you gonna be able to get home okay?’ and they sent me a lot of photos, of cars underwater, streets flooded over, parking garages and schools submerged too. Only then did I realize just how heavy the rain had been. I rushed to make a few phone calls home, telling them to keep safe; our home renovations had to stop halfway-through.

Luckily I got home okay, had dinner, watched TV, and the screen is still full of reports of the fight against typhoon Krosa, a shocking sight:

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妈妈呀,都淹没了

Mommy! I'm stuck!

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乖乖,这个车自己飘起来拉

Good boy. This car floated to the surface.

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雨中真情啊!

Loving in the rain!

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这车灯竟然还亮的,莫非车主还在开?

This car's lights were actually still on, I wonder if the owner was still driving..

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高校的门口就这样被淹了

The school gates were flooded too

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只留下人民,没有政府了

The government's gone, only the people remain

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杭州有个美丽的传说,白蛇传,当年白蛇为了寻夫水漫金山,今天又是谁满了杭州?

Hangzhou has a beautiful legend, Tale of the White Snake [14], where Madame White Snake flood the lands looking for her man; but who was it that flooded Hangzhou today?