All of southern China has been affected by a strong wave of bad weather for a week, with floods, record hailstorms and tens of thousands of people evacuated.
“Hailstones” as large as pellets have been reported in recent days in the cities of the region Guangxiin southern China, in an area plagued all week by extreme weather phenomena and incessant bad weather.
Much of southern China had to deal with torrential rains that caused floods and tens of thousands of evacuations. A tornado was reported in Hong Kong while in Guangdong, which has a population of around 127 million inhabitants (more than double that of Italy), the rain fell for days and days practically without stopping.
In Yingde, in northern Guangdong, more than thirty centimeters of rain fell from last Friday to Sunday, as confirmed by the state-run newspaper China Daily. Almost 20 thousand people were evacuated and nine rivers risked overflowing. Heavy rainfall also hit the nearby Chinese provinces of Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangxi. Precisely in this latter area, some videos published on social networks show the fall of enormous blocks of hail.
Thunderstorms, hail and snow in the North-East: lightning sets an Enel power plant on fire, a tree overwhelms a man
Extreme events are intense meteorological phenomena which usually have a long return time: many tens of years can elapse before an event of the same type happens again. However, climate change is changing the situation: extreme events are becoming more frequent and this requires a rethink of how they are addressed. The hailstorm that occurred in the Guangxi region of China can be counted among the extreme weather events caused by anthropogenic climate change, i.e. caused by man’s emissions of climate-altering gases.
