On Thursday, heavy rains raised the water level in the Pearl River Delta, causing record floods in parts of southern China. It was expected. The best in almost a century.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the region's worst-damaged areas, including Guangdong Province, the manufacturing and logistics hub home to Shenzhen, China's high-tech capital.
On Wednesday, China's Ministry of Water Resources issued the highest flood warning to the Pearl River basin, stating that the water level at one location "above historical records" and affected the provincial capital, Guangzhou.
An image from Shaoguan City, north of Guangzhou, shows residents passing through a flooded arterial road as water in some areas reached the top of the car on Wednesday.
Muddy floods flooded shops and buildings, and people were seen cleaning up debris.
In the lowlands of the Pearl River Delta, there are economic powerhouses in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, as well as several small but densely populated cities with major manufacturing and other industries.
State emergency management officials said earlier this week that the direct economic loss was estimated at 1.7 billion yuan ($ 253 million).
Under the highest alert levels, endangered areas of Guangdong province need everything, including interruption of factory work and closure of schools, to minimize damage. I was ordered to take action.
Other parts of southern China, such as the coastal areas of Fujian and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, were also affected by this month's record rains, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate.
Summer floods are common in parts of China, but as a result of climate change, these have become more extreme in recent years.
So far, Chinese authorities have not directly linked this year's extreme floods to climate change.
Some local media call this a "once-in-a-century flood," with water levels above the highs recorded in 1931 and the worst in the region in 1915. Reported to be approaching the flood.
