Meteorology provides key to flood control

The most critical moment for residents of the Mengwa Flood Diversion Area in Funan county, Anhui province, came on June 14, 1991, when the water of the Huaihe River surpassed the safe level of 28.66 meters at the Wangjiaba sluice gates.

The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters gave an order to open the sluice gates at midnight, and divert the flood into the Mengwa area. That meant the residents would have to be evacuated immediately.

"I even heard that explosives had been prepared, for fear that the sluice gates would not open," said Liu Xiaochang, retired chief engineer at the Anhui Meteorological Center.

"But there were still more than 20,000 villagers inside the area waiting to be evacuated, and the government could not accomplish that in such a short time."

Local meteorologists used every second and the limited information they had to analyze the rainfall trend.

They came to the conclusion that the storm would cease during the night in the area around the upper reaches of the river and the Mengwa area.

"If we got it wrong, it would be a disaster," said Liu, who decided with his colleagues to report their assessment to flood control authorities and delay opening the gate until about 8 am on June 15.

By the time the sluice gates were opened at 7:45 am, all the villagers had been safely evacuated.

Acknowledged as the most severe flooding since 1961, the incident is remembered by people nationwide, even though few know about the contribution the meteorologists made because the details were barely mentioned in numerous memoirs published later.

In 2005, the China Meteorological Administration approved the establishment of the Huaihe Basin Meteorological Center, aimed at providing coordinated services across the entire Huaihe River drainage area.

The area extends 1,000 kilometers from west to east, covering 270,000 square kilometers in Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces.

The center, which opened in 2005, tracks all types of real-time meteorological data collected from across the area via thousands of automatic monitoring stations, satellites and radars, according to Wang Dongyong, director of both the Huaihe center and the Anhui Meteorological Center.