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Record rains prompted mass evacuations in the industrial city of Baoding, about 150 kilometers from Beijing, following deluges of torrential storms that submerged the city this week. Officials reported that almost a year’s worth of rain poured down in 24 hours, causing massive flooding and requiring more than 19,000 residents to evacuate their homes.
19,453 residents from 6,171 families were evacuated after floodwaters inundated areas of Baoding in Hebei province, local officials confirmed. Yi in western Baoding was hardest hit, measuring an incredible 447mm of rain from Thursday through early Friday nearly the city’s average yearly rainfall of just over 500mm.
Dramatic video of the flooding was released by the China Meteorological Administration, with police ankle-deep in water as continual heavy rain poured down at night. Officials said the amount of rain matched that brought by the historic typhoon that lashed Beijing in 2023, the greatest on record since weather measurements started 140 years ago.
The Baoding district of Zhuozhou already ravaged by flooding in the 2023 typhoon was again in distress, with local roads and bridges left impassable as over 190mm of rain pounded into the region by Friday morning.
Northern China remains under threat, as the national weather bureau had forecast intense rainfall across several provinces including Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Heilongjiang, and Jilin through Saturday. Rainfall levels across Gansu, Shaanxi, and Hebei in the past month were reported to be one to two times higher than normal, with some regions receiving up to four times their average precipitation.
These trends highlight an alarming trend of increased rainfall in northern China habitually a dry region leading scientists to attribute the phenomenon to global climate change. In 2024, Hebei province alone reported 640mm of rainfall, about 26.6% more than its 10-year average, based on official climate data.
Earlier in the week, Shandong, an eastern province, also saw severe weather, receiving half a year’s rainfall in five hours. The subsequent flash floods took two lives, with ten more missing.
Severe weather conditions have continued to wreak havoc in China throughout 2025. Reuters reports indicate that at least 307 individuals have lost their lives or gone missing as a result of such occurrences during the first half of the year, and the overall economic loss has exceeded $7.6 billion.
Officials have appealed to residents who live in high-risk areas to be on guard and adhere to evacuation notices as the storm system keeps advancing through northern China.
