Mercury to bounce back to 38-degree high
Print Edition
SCATTERED thundershowers provided some relief from the relentless heat yesterday afternoon, pushing the mercury down to below 30 degrees Celsius, forecasters said.
However, the mercury will bounce back today, hitting a high of 38 degrees and the sweltering weather will continue through next Monday. But a significant respite from the heat wave is expected starting next Tuesday.
Shanghai issued this summer’s third red alert for heat at 8:10am yesterday morning, warning that the temperature was likely to top 40 degrees again. By 9:50am, most districts recorded temperatures of 36 or 37 degrees.
The mercury later climbed to 39.2 degrees but fell when thundershowers hit parts of the city.
The temperature in areas that were drenched fell below 35 degrees at 2:25pm. But other places that received no rain saw the mercury rise above 38 degrees, and one monitoring station even recorded a high of 42.4 degrees.
Minhang District, Chongming Island and the Pudong New Area also experienced strong gusts during the storm.
Some residents reported that there was some hail in Xuhui District and the Pudong New Area — where hail fell on Tuesday — due to the severe convective weather. The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau said that though its monitoring stations didn’t record any hail, a comprehensive analysis based on radar monitoring data showed that the conditions were right for it.
“Hail is a kind of convective weather and Shanghai’s convective weather often appears between April and September,” said Zhang Ruiyi, a chief service officer at the weather bureau. “July and August are the two months when hail occurs more often.”
About 20 flights were canceled and over 100 more were delayed at Shanghai’s Hongqiao and Pudong airports due to the inclement weather yesterday afternoon, the Shanghai Airport Authority said.
The air traffic controller issued an orange alert, the second-highest of its four-tier alert system, for both airports in the afternoon because of heavy showers accompanied by lightning and thunder, according to the Air Traffic Management Bureau.
The convective weather affected a 50-kilometer area around Hongqiao and Pudong airports, which made it difficult for aircraft to take off and land, an air traffic management bureau official said. It had predicted that the takeoff and landing capacity of Shanghai’s two airports would be reduced by half.
Hongqiao airport was the worst hit as over 10 flights, both domestic and international, had been canceled as of 5pm due to the weather and over 60 were delayed in the afternoon. About eight flights had been diverted to other airports from Pudong airport as of 3:30pm, according to the authority.
Meanwhile, the city’s electricity consumption yesterday afternoon reached a record high — 31,384 megawatts, the State Grid Shanghai Electric Power Company said. The city’s power usage, which is up 5.2 percent over last year, hit the historic peak at 12:35pm.
The power supplier said the city’s electricity consumption is expected to keep rising as the scorching temperatures continue until next week. However, it assured that the city’s power supply is sufficient to keep the city running.
The city’s over 2,000 repairmen have dealt with 88,213 power problems across the city since the peak periods for electricity usage began on June 15. The repairmen are dealing with 2,004 power malfunctions every day on average, according to the company.
The heat has also caused leaves to fall from local plane trees, according to the city’s greenery authority.
“This year’s plum rain season was longer than normal, which meant leaves on the surface had good growth. But the leaves that were underneath them were deprived of sufficient sunshine and, being weak, fell off the trees as the sudden continuous heat exacerbated their dehydration.” an official explained.
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