Typhoon Bavi batters eastern China, threatens days of heavy rain

Typhoon Bavi, the most powerful storm to strike mainland China this year, brought heavy rain to the eastern coast on Sunday and lashed densely populated cities with violent winds, testing the country’s ability to cope with extreme weather.

Bavi had weakened by Sunday morning to a tropical storm as it pushed inland, but forecasters warned that the France-sized storm system could unleash prolonged ​and widespread rain across eastern and northern China in the coming days. Nearly 2 million people were evacuated ahead of Bavi’s arrival, mostly in Zhejiang province, an ‌economic and ‌technological powerhouse in the world’s second-largest economy.

Bavi struck Zhejiang’s coastal city of Yuhuan at around 11:20 p.m. on Saturday before ​making a second landfall in Yueqing, part of the city of Wenzhou, at around midnight.