License plates surface after storm

Pudong New Area police have collected 102 license plates that were knocked off vehicles during Friday's downpour, police said Saturday.

The license plates, which fell off in the sloshing flood water, highlight the sudden severity of the rainstorm, which left flood prevention authorities scrambling.

The storm hit Shanghai with surprising strength Friday afternoon. The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau issued an orange storm alert at 4:18 pm, and upgraded it to a red alert 26 minutes later.

The weather bureau issues a red storm alert whenever it expects precipitation to exceed 100 millimeters over the following three hours. It last issued the alert on August 17, 2010.

Pudong took the brunt of the storm. By 6 pm, 137.1 millimeters of rain had fallen on the district, compared with 70.7 millimeters downtown, according to the weather bureau.

The bureau doesn't issue storm warnings if precipitation isn't expected to exceed 50 millimeters over a six-hour period. On Friday, Pudong was hit with almost triple that amount in fewer than three hours.

The storm caused serious consequences because the weather bureau did not anticipate that the rain would be so heavy, said Zhang Zhenyu, a press officer for the Shanghai Municipal Flood Control Administration.

The agency issued a second-level flood emergency response at 4:28 pm, dispatching 1,000 workers and nearly 100 mobile pumps, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Still, Zhang acknowledged that flood control workers had trouble responding promptly to the flooding because the storm was so much stronger than expected.

More than 40 streets across the city were flooded, forcing drivers to traverse the waterlogged roads, according to a report on the news website eastday.com.

On Century Avenue, traffic was backed up from 3 pm to 10 pm, said a police officer surnamed Shen.

Police are waiting for car owners to reclaim their lost plates. They sent 76 license plates to the traffic police headquarters on 658 Luoshan Road, said a traffic officer surnamed Wang. The rest of the plates were sent to public security bureaus in Yangjing town and Weifang community.

The storm also caused long delays on the subway lines in Pudong.