A man stands drenched through with rain in Beijing on Wednesday. (Photo: Wang Jing/China Daily)
The National Meteorological Center issued a yellow alert for heavy rain on Thursday in southern and eastern China, including Shanghai, which was battered on Wednesday, and warned that flooding and landslides were possible.
Storms are likely to hit regions along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River through Thursday, affecting Shanghai and the provinces of Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou, the center said in a statement.
Torrential rain is likely in some northern parts of Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang, as well as southern Anhui, the statement added.
The meteorological center warned local authorities to monitor conditions and take precautions against flooding, landslides and other disasters.
Shanghai's meteorological authorities issued on Wednesday this year's first orange warning for a storm. China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.
Traffic during the morning peak hours was heavily affected by the rain on Wednesday in Shanghai. More than 80 roads and more than 1,000 houses were flooded. Several tunnels, including the West Jinshajiang Road tunnel and Moyu Road and Cao'an Road tunnel, were sealed off.
Netizens uploaded photos of people fishing in the middle of the road to news website Xinmin.cn.
In Dahua, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, 16,000 pigs drowned at a farm flooded on Sunday by heavy rainstorms, leaving authorities with the difficult task of disposing of the carcasses.
Wang Lin, the Liuye township farm's manager, said the rain came too fast for an evacuation. Thousands of carcasses floated in the floodwaters. Pigs that survived the flooding crawled to the shore or climbed to safety on rooftops.
Such a large number of animals drowning in a single event is unprecedented in the region, said Nong Yingxiang, an official with the local animal health watchdog.
Though the pigs died from a natural disaster, limiting the risk of spreading disease, Nong said carcasses decay faster at high temperatures and could pollute rivers if not cleaned up quickly.
Heavy rains have lashed much of South China over the past few weeks, causing floods and landslides, bringing down buildings and destorying crops in the region.
The latest rainstorms in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region have killed eight people and left three others missing, local authorities said on Tuesday.
