Guangzhou tornado proves severe, bureau warns extreme weather to persist

Preliminary assessment has indicated that the intensity of the tornado that struck Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, on Saturday reached the level of a strong tornado, Guangdong provincial meteorological bureau said in a statement on Sunday.

The bureau has organized a team of experts to conduct on-site disaster investigation and carry out a preliminary investigation of more than 1.7 kilometers of the tornado's impact path, with a maximum impact width of about 280 meters, it said.

The tornado, which mainly hit the city's Baiyun district at about 3:30 pm on Saturday, has caused five deaths and 33 other injures.

Meanwhile a total of 141 factory and residential houses were destroyed or damaged by the disaster, according to a statement released by Guangzhou's Baiyun district.

The tornado, accompanied by downpours, hailstones, thunder and lightning, also caused blackouts in Zhongluotan and Taihe townships in the district, affecting many local electricity users.

The statement said this year's tornado appeared when the warm and humid airflow from the southwest of the South China Sea continued to strengthen, transporting a large amount of water vapor and energy to Guangzhou.

Guangzhou has been in an unstable state of high temperature and humidity for a long time and a large amount of unstable energy has accumulated near the ground in the city, said the statement.

The low-level jet strengthened on Saturday, exacerbating the unstable layer structure of "cold above and warm below", it said.

The warm and humid air flow in the near surface continued to increase in the city and multiple meteorological observation stations recorded abnormally high absolute humidity on Saturday morning, it said.

Meanwhile the mesoscale convergence line on the ground and the passage of high-altitude fluctuations served as triggering conditions, triggering strong updrafts and causing the mother storm of the tornado to develop strongly, it said.

The bureau has warned the extreme weather in Guangzhou would continue in the following 48 hours and urged relevant departments to introduce concrete and effective measures to cope with possible natural disasters, it added.