LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Typhoon Dolphin has landed in China. More than 1.6 million people evacuated from their homes. It made landfall on Sunday in the eastern province of Zhejiang, which is where we find NPR China correspondent Jennifer Pak.
JENNIFER PAK, BYLINE: Typhoon Dolphin made a landing on the east coast of Yuhuan, where state broadcaster CCTV reporter Wang Li was standing. Well, barely.
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WANG LI: (Speaking Mandarin).
PAK: "You can see how strong the wind and rain is," she says, with a rope visible on her waist. "I can hardly stay up, so I've attached this sandbag to my waist." Local authorities have suspended some train services and canceled over 2,600 flights as of Monday morning in multiple cities. Continuous rainfall battered the financial capital, Shanghai, with parts of the downtown flood. Videos circulating on Chinese social media show residents waiting knee deep on streets normally lined with influencers and tourists posing for photos.
By Monday morning, Typhoon Dolphin had weakened to a tropical storm. But torrential rain that comes along with typhoons is forecast to continue for a whole week, says meteorologist Tang Xiaojing from the China Meteorological Administration.
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TANG XIAOJING: (Non-English language spoken).
PAK: "The impact of the rainfall is very wide," she tells CCTV, "and it covers more than 10 provinces and cities." She warns there could be flash floods, landslides and mudslides. And typhoons are only going to get more intense with global warming, says science adviser Johnny Chan at the Shanghai-based Asia-Pacific Typhoon Collaborative Research Center.
JOHNNY CHAN: We can expect more severe typhoons in the Pacific, and so some of those will definitely hit some parts of Asia - Japan, Korea, China, Philippines, Vietnam and so on.
PAK: In the Philippines, Typhoon Dolphin intensified the monsoon season, he says. Severe weather forced several ports to close. Even areas the typhoon doesn't hit directly can feel the impact, says Chan, speaking from Hong Kong.
CHAN: Actually, yesterday, we had the highest temperature on record.
PAK: A temperature of about 98 degrees, the hottest since 1884.
Jennifer Pak, NPR News, Jinhua city, Zhejiang province.
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