Typhoon Dolphin Nears China's Coast, 130,000 Evacuated

Shanghai’s two airports, Pudong and Hongqiao, canceled 1,384 flights on Sunday, nearly 60 percent of the day’s total traffic, as Typhoon Dolphin closed in on China’s eastern coast. Fujian province and the city of Shanghai moved roughly 130,000 people out of at-risk zones. For Serbia, which has applied a free trade agreement with China since July 1, 2024, the disruption is hitting exactly the stretch of the Chinese coast that ships out most of the goods bound for European ports, so supply chain delays typically surface weeks later, long after the typhoon has dropped out of the news.

China’s National Meteorological Center (NMC) reported that Dolphin was sitting over the southern part of the East China Sea on Sunday morning, about 305 kilometers east of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, with maximum winds of 45 meters per second near its center. It was moving northwest at 15 to 20 kilometers per hour, with landfall expected somewhere between Zhoushan in Zhejiang and Fuding in Fujian, most likely near Sanmen, sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning.

The NMC issued a red warning for the typhoon and an orange warning for rainstorms, and raised its own emergency response to level III. China’s color coded warning system has four levels, with red being the most severe, while in the emergency response system level I ranks as the highest. Zhejiang province moved to level I as early as Saturday evening, Fujian raised its response to level II at 9 a.m. Sunday, and Shanghai remained on a blue warning, with forecasts that the city could face wind and rain for up to four days.

How Many People Have Been Evacuated, and What Has Shut Down?

By 6 p.m. Saturday, Fujian had relocated 98,900 people out of high risk areas, with 17,800 personnel deployed on the ground. Shanghai evacuated 30,300 residents from at-risk zones, and officials expected that number to keep rising through Sunday. Wenzhou shut down all 85 of its A-rated tourist attractions and evacuated more than 1,600 visitors, while all 1,210 registered fishing boats in Fuding returned to port.

Transport and construction came to a halt together:

• 162 ferry routes in Zhejiang and 55 in Fujian stopped running
• rail service across Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanghai was suspended for Sunday and Monday
• work at every coastal construction site was halted, and construction vessels were pulled back to safe waters

Eastern Zhejiang was forecast to get 250 to 440 millimeters of rain, and the Ministry of Water Resources and the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) issued a red warning for flash floods across 23 counties and cities in the province. More than 4,000 observers were deployed to patrol landslide prone areas.

Why Is Dolphin More Dangerous Than July’s Bavi?

The comparison with the previous typhoon that made landfall in China in July was drawn by Xu Yinglong, chief forecaster at the NMC. He told CGTN that Dolphin could bring stronger winds and heavier rainfall than Bavi.

The reason lies in its track. Dolphin formed unusually far to the east, close to the 180th meridian, and traveled more than 7,200 kilometers to reach the Chinese coast, a path that would make its landfall in China a rare event, likely the easternmost formation on record to make landfall there since 1951. The cyclone spent more than 260 hours at sea, a lifespan of twelve days, well beyond the usual seven to ten. Over that stretch it strengthened to super typhoon level three separate times and weakened back three times, and those swings are exactly what made forecasting its track and rainfall intensity so difficult.

Okinawa as a Preview

Dolphin passed by Japan’s Okinawa on August 7. Five people were injured there, five homes were partially damaged, and 16,920 households lost power. Toyota halted operations that day at nine factories in southern Japan, the first serious sign that the cyclone could stop industrial production, not just traffic.

That detail matters for what came next. Zhejiang, Fujian and Shanghai form the industrial and port core of Chinese exports to Europe, and a two-day rail suspension combined with the near-total shutdown of one of the world’s busiest air hubs does not pass without leaving a mark on delivery schedules. Serbian importers who order goods directly from China will feel it through pushed-back deadlines, not through a headline about wind.

The NMC’s forecast is that Dolphin will gradually weaken after making landfall. The full extent of the damage will not be clear until the rain stops in eastern Zhejiang on Monday, where flash floods, not wind, are the main reason behind the red warning.