A slow-moving rainstorm overwhelmed rivers and reservoirs, leading to deadly flooding in the province of Henan.
A slow-moving rainstorm in mid-July 2021 caused rivers and reservoirs to spill over their banks, leading to deadly flooding in central China. A new storm has now come ashore, bringing even more rain to the country.
Flooding from the mid-July rainstorm was still visible on July 26, 2021, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a false-color image of northern Henan province. For comparison, the same area is shown on July 20, 2020.
According to news reports, the rainstorm dropped a year’s worth of rain on Zhengzhou, the province’s capital city, over the span of three days. The storm then tracked north and dropped 26 centimeters (10 inches) of rain within a span of two hours on the city of Xinxiang. The region’s network of rivers and reservoirs overflowed, and floodwaters submerged transportation infrastructure and buildings, trapping many people and affecting millions.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
