Floods swamp southern China, spark extreme weather fears
Floods swamped a handful of cities in southern China’s densely populated Pearl River Delta with record-breaking rains, sparking worries about defense against extreme weather.
QINGYUAN, China — Floods swamped a handful of cities in southern China’s densely populated Pearl River Delta following record-breaking rains, sparking worries about the region’s defenses against bigger deluges induced by extreme weather events.
The province once dubbed the “factory floor of the world” is prone to summer floods. Its defenses against disruptive floods were severely tested in June 2022 when Guangdong was pounded by the heaviest downpours in six decades. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated.
Since Thursday, Guangdong has been battered by unusually heavy, sustained, and widespread rainfall, with powerful storms ushering in an earlier-than-normal start to the province’s annual flooding season in May and June.
In Qingyuan, a relatively small city of 4 million, some residents counted their losses from the flooding. Others worried about more serious disasters in the future.
“My rice fields are fully flooded, my fields are gone,” Huang Jingrong, 61, told Reuters.
Rating: 5