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A bird's eye view of a tornado-hit village in Funing, Jiangsu province, on Friday. [Photo/Jiangsu Communication Broadcasting Station] |
Place: Yancheng, East China's Jiangsu province
Time: 2:30 pm, Thursday, June 23, 2016
Casualties: 98 killed and about 800 injured
Rescue efforts:
Search for the people through the debris has been completed, cleaning efforts are underway.
More than 1,300 police officers have been called in to assist with the rescue efforts and displaced residents.
The city has activated its highest response system following the extreme weather.
The photo shows the aftermath of the tornado. [Photo/Jiangsu Communication Broadcasting Station] |
Why it caused such huge casualties
The tornado has been scaled at EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which indicates its wind speed will reach between 218 kilometers to 266 kilometers per hour, the state broadcaster China Central Television reported.
The Enhanced Fujita scale has six scales from EF0 to EF5.
Yancheng city government said that the tornado on Thursday was the second strongest one that has ever struck the city, just weaker than the one on March 3, 1966.
The tornado struck densely populated areas, along with gales, rainstorms and hailstorms, to cause the huge casualties in the eastern city of Yancheng, Jiangsu province on Thursday, according to media reports and experts.
Two girls sleep at a temporary settlement in a primary school of Shuoji town, Funing county in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, on June 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] |
How it forms
Two strong air masses met over Yancheng city, said Han Guirong, an expert from the Meteorological Bureau of Jiangsu Province. The warm mass moved northwest and the cold moved southwest, with whirlwinds forming near the ground, he said.
Strong winds on the ground have fortified the whirlwinds to form the tornado, but it was a coincidence for the tornado, hailstorms and other severe weather conditions to happen at the same time there, Han said.
Why in Jiangsu
Jiangsu province has so many tornados because of its low-lying plain, many rivers and lakes, as well as its location at a transition zone of subtropical and warm temperate zones where severe weather conditions are more common.
Jiangsu has recorded the most tornados in China between 1961 and 2010. More than 20 take place every year in the province.
About 43 tornados on average happen annually across the country between 1991 and 2014, most in the afternoons in summer and early autumn.
Villagers search for valuable things and clean debris of their homes at Beichen village in Funing county, Yancheng, Jiangsu province, on June 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] |
Hard to predict
The environment in which a tornado forms is similar to that of a thunderstorm or a gale, so it is very hard to identify it, according to Wu Zhifang, chief forecaster with Guangdong provincial meteorological bureau.
China has no special tornado alert system, and tornados are classified as strong convection weather.
The US is the country with the most tornados – an average of 1,122 every year from 1982 to 2010, according to National Climate Center under CMA.
What you should do in a tornado?
Leave your car, hide in low-lying areas.
Stay away from utility poles, trees, billboards, and walls which may collapse.
Stay in solid houses or underground spaces.
Weather forecast for disaster areas
Heavy rains in short periods on Friday, gales with speed up to 24.4 meters per second.
Cloudy on Saturday, temperature to reach 30 degrees.
Heavy rains possible on Sunday.
