Typhoon Saudel brings torrential rain, flooding to China's coastal areas

China’s southern coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong braced for further torrential rain on Friday, after severe downpours linked to Typhoon Saudel triggered flooding in urban and rural areas, swamping vehicles and causing a three-storey brick building to collapse.

In Fujian’s city of Fuding, known for its tea plantations and lush greenery, firefighters waded through waist-deep floodwaters to carry elderly people to safety, social media footage verified by Reuters showed.

In nearby Jinxi village, a tea-growing community surrounded by mountains, raging floodwaters inundated residential buildings and brought down a three-storey house, the footage showed.

Local authorities have shut schools, suspended public transport and enforced emergency flood protocols across multiple coastal areas. Saudel made its third landfall along the coast of Fujian on Thursday morning after intensifying again over the South China Sea.

Heavy rain forecast as Typhoon Saudel girds towards Japan and Taiwan

It is the seventh typhoon to hit China this year and the third to strike the city of Yuhuan in eastern Zhejiang in less than two months.

The meteorological sequence is extremely rare, according to the China Meteorological Administration, and one that experts say is closely linked to El Niño.

During an El Niño year, the Western Pacific subtropical high is exceptionally strong and positioned further north, guiding typhoons along a northwest trajectory directly toward China’s eastern coast.

The United Nations warned on Thursday that the El Niño was set to intensify further into 2027 and could be the strongest ever, raising the risk of prolonged extreme weather.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been relocated across Zhejiang and nearby provinces since late August, including more than 83,000 residents evacuated in Fujian alone as Saudel tracked inland and soaked surrounding areas.

In Putian, a city in Fujian where the Mulan River flows through the urban core, floodwaters spilled over main highways, damaged bridge structures, and inundated residential buildings, according to social media videos shared on China’s RedNote.

Local authorities are organising rescue teams to evacuate trapped residents, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday, adding that some people are missing.  

Stronger, longer typhoon season

Saudel follows Typhoon Narra, which dumped heavy rain across Guangxi, Hainan and Guangdong provinces late last month.

Torrential downpours pose a high risk for secondary disasters such as landslides, as recent rains have already pushed rivers over warning thresholds and inundated low-lying communities, the Ministry of Natural Resources warned.

Typhoons normally occur in the western Pacific, but Super El Nino conditions shift typhoon formation further east, said Hui Su, a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

“This typhoon season, we tend to see stronger typhoons form towards the east and they travel long distances and they get much stronger when they actually reach land, like in China or like the southern part of Asia.”

This typhoon season could extend into December, rather than the usual end in October or November, because of an extended period of warm weather, Su said.