Typhoon pounds Shanghai with heavy rains; 1.1 million evacuated 

In this photo provided by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a resident rides a bicycle on a road submerged by water in Xiangshan county, east China’s Zhejiang Province
(Xinhua/He Yousong) (zwx)

A typhoon pounded the Chinese coast south of Shanghai on Saturday with strong winds and heavy rainfall, submerging roads, felling trees and forcing the evacuation of 1.1 million people.
Typhoon Chan-hom slammed ashore with winds of up to 160 kilometers per hour near Zhoushan, a city east of the port of Ningbo in Zhejiang province. It has dumped more than 100 millimeters of rain since late Friday — about a month’s average in less than 24 hours, China Central Television and the Xinhua News Agency reported.
No deaths or injuries had been reported by Saturday evening.
“It was so windy that the rain came in through the windows even though they were closed,” Zhoushan resident Zhang Zhouqun, 53, manager of a logistics company, said in a telephone interview.
The storm felled 10-year-old trees in his neighborhood, stranded cars in 60-centimeter-deep water and swamped half the fields, Zhang said. Police were out barring people from trying to drive. At the urging of local officials, Zhang’s family had stocked up a few days’ worth of groceries, he said.
Some 1.1 million people had been evacuated from coastal areas of Zhejiang and more than 46,000 in neighboring Jiangsu province ahead of the storm, Xinhua said. The provincial flood control bureau said 28,764 ships had been ordered back to port.
The national weather service said earlier the typhoon might be the strongest to strike China since the communist government took power in 1949. It initially was deemed a super-typhoon but was downgraded at midday Saturday to a strong typhoon and was weakening further as it moved inland.
Heavy downpours were reported in some areas, including the village of Lai’ao, which recorded more than 400 millimeters of rain, according to Xinhua.
More than 100 trains and 600 flights were canceled in the cities of Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and Taizhou, according to Xinhua. Buses and passenger ferries also suspended service.
Earlier, Chan-hom caused 20 injuries as it moved over islands in southern Japan, Kyodo news agency reported.
The storm dumped rain on the northern Philippines and Taiwan, where several flights were suspended. The stock market and public offices were closed Friday in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital.
Chan-hom is the second major storm to hit China this week, after Typhoon Linfa forced 56,000 people from their homes in the southern province of Guangdong. AP

chan-hom weakens as it heads for korean peninsula

Typhoon Chan-hom, which caused the evacuation of about a million people and the cancellation of hundreds of air flights in eastern China Saturday, weakened as it moved northeast along the East China ocean toward the Korean Peninsula. Chan-hom was moving at about 30 kilometers per hour at 5 a.m. local time yesterday, the China weather bureau said on its website. The top speed at the center of the typhoon had slowed to 35 meters per second yesterday from 45 meters per second Saturday and will continue to weaken, the weather bureau said. Gale-force winds measuring seven to eight will still blow along coastal Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Shandong until 8:00 a.m. today, and some locations could expect winds of nine and ten force, the weather bureau said. In Shanghai, typhoon orange alert was lifted yesterday and subway-train service resumed.