Not just a tag line, it really has been raining for 40 days. Much of central China, including major food growing regions, is subject to flooding. There has been a a direction issued to plant rice in the orchards. Hubei and Wuhan are being flooded.
Grim’: China battles record flooding after torrential downpours
Dozens already reported dead as rivers burst their banks after days of heavy rain, with more forecast.
As many as 33 rivers in China have risen to their highest levels in history after days of torrential rain, a senior water ministry official has said, with more rain forecast.Ye Jianchun, vice minister of water resources, told a briefing on Monday that 433 rivers – as well as major lakes like the Dongting, the Poyang and the Tai – had all risen beyond their warning levels since the flood season began in June.
“Going into the key flood-prevention period of late July to early August, the current trends remain grim on the Yangtze and the Lake Tai basins,” he said, adding that the belts of heavy rain that have lashed central China would eventually head north.
Average rainfall has been at its highest since records began in 1961.
http://floodlist.com/asia/china-floods-central-eastern-july-2020
China – Floods Affect Millions in Central and Eastern Provinces
10 JULY, 2020 BY FLOODLIST NEWS IN ASIA, NEWS
Flooding in central and eastern provinces of China has worsened over the last few days, with over 14 million people affected across the worst hit provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Zhejiang.Floodwaters first hit Sichuan, Guizhou and Chongqing in the southwest and Hubei in central China in late June. High river flows have since moved eastwards along the Yangtze river basin. According to China’s Ministry of Water Resources, rivers are above danger levels in over 80 locations.
Recent heavy rainfall in the region has swollen rivers and lakes further, as well as causing flash flooding and landslides. Wide areas of eastern China saw between 400 mm and 600 mm of rain in the first 10 days of July, according to figures from China’s Meteorological Agency (CMA).
Rainfall in China July 1 to 10, 2020
Musings from the Chiefio 
Yup .
When the Fake Newz gets their talking points,the headline will be “Biblical Floods” deluge China.
But so far the coverage by North America media is almost non existent.
Almost like the most populated area in the world does not matter.
That millions are at risk,if the dams fail and that food could be in real short supply this fall are not of importance to North American consumers,farmers and relief agencies..
There is an interesting resignation letter from the Grey Lady over at Small Dead Animals, by Bari
Covering the effect of Truth is known to the select few and to be delivered from on high to the rest of us.As opposed to reporting old style with the 5 Ws.
Is the atmosphere cooling?
Are we seeing the drop out from too many tons of water hanging in the sky?
I have been following it, but not on fake news. All things are glorious with the PRC!
But it is another blow to Xi,His dreams of world domination are hitting snags.
Warm China Sea and cold interior results in heavy Monsoon. China will need to buy lots of food from the west to make up for their losses. That PRC General that wants confrontation with the US may need to curb his mouth as China may not be able to afford “Guns & Butter” diplomacy around the world or for that matter just in China. The USSR collapsed financially in their effort to over take the US as the world super power. Like the USSR the CCP has nearly run out of time, Communist governments are short lived, they run out of OPM as their bureaucrats strangle their society with ever increasing demands for wealth and controls to feed Their Machine !
St Swithin’s Day too (it’s the 15th here); those poor people have already had their 40 days’ worth. The Three Gorges Dam is very worrying.
That report was very interesting.
@p.g.
Hey! They are the woke dream! They do not care about butter! That is for the little people to think about.
But seriously, they do not care about butter. They see their population as bargaining chips. That general will get his guns.
Big deal. In California it rained for 43 days – starting in December, 1861.
“The flood decimated California’s burgeoning economy. An estimated 200,000 cattle drowned, about a quarter of all the cattle in the ranching state (the disaster shifted the California economy to farming). One in eight houses was destroyed or carried away in the flood waters. It was also estimated that as much as a quarter of California’s taxable property was destroyed, which bankrupted the state.”
https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/climate-change-1861-sty
@ Annie:
Great call! Also, one of my favorites from Billy Bragg.
Good memories…
The Chinese had better start buiding lots of arks, fast !
Don’t you have to have read the Bible to know about arks?
A bloke my father knew used to talk about “Back when it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and finished up with a thunderstorm that lasted a fortnight”
Is Xi losing the Mandate of Heaven?
If the 3 Gorges Dam was to fail – and some are already saying it is showing signs of it then China will lose a lot of food and almost all its industry. This will put them in a very difficult ‘how to avoid losing face’ position. If they cannot feed and supply their PLA they cannot use it to threaten the region but backing down now will be loss of face as will asking India if they can ignore the Chinese aggression in the Himalayas and please can we have some of your rice surplus? This could go a very ugly way as the Chinese do a last belligerent burst before they know that they will lose that capacity.
“Average rainfall has been at its highest since records began in 1961”
Average rainfall has been highest, so, not total rainfall, or they would have said total rainfall
Records began in 1961? In China? Where they have hundreds of years of records of everything.
I stopped reading at that point.
@Tony McKenna:
Remember the Cultural Revolution and destruction of past / history? Think maybe the CCP decided when data begins? Leaping off the cliff of conclusions is not tidy.
Then nit picking over the words total vs average? When covering a region, the number MUST be an average of gauges over an area.
To stop reading is to stop understanding and embrace pre judgments.
Reporters are innumerate. They try to re-write the press release and often get it wrong. Ignore their scribbles, it is raining a lot, and if it continues it will not be good.
If you saw this on a good weather/meteorology site, I may respond differently. Newswire, well, errors in reporting.
1927 and all that.
Mao starts his terrorizing while the UK Navy blasts the Chinese big guns to stop the maritime harassment the Chinese government instigates. Chinese civil war as Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek begins counter revolution in Shanghai. 1,000 US marines land in China to protect American property, later the British government decides to send troops to China.
And in the US it rained and it rained — The Great Mississippi flood.
History may not actually repeat but it often rhymes.
For those doubting the sources above, will, NOAA do? June only, 200%+ (and it has continued raining daily since):
It has been a wet year here, too, to date. For the current water year, NOAA estimates that we’ve had between 60 and 70 inches of precipitation. Average is 54 inches, so even if we get none for the rest of it, we’ll still be wet for the year. If we get the average amount for the remainder of the water year, we’ll see about 7 inches more.
Also there is Earth nullschool showing Total Precipitable Water …
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/equirectangular=-345.00,0.00,164
There is a Lancashire poem about t’ great flood: Marriot Edgar’s “Sam and Noah”
http://monologues.co.uk/Three-Halfpence-a-Foot.htm
Stanley Holloway recorded many of Edgar’s monologues. When I’ve sent copies out on t’ Net, I’ve had to load me blunderbuss wi’ apostrophes…
And it is still raining!
It appears that the Chinese government has said that the 3 Gorges Dam has moved, distorted and is leaking under the pressure of the load of being 50 feet over flood level in the reservoir behind it. No information on the amount of movement. they are dumping as much water as they can to prevent further loading and have begun blowing up levees on the river below to reduce the surge from making the flooding worse in cities down stream. More flooding up stream from heavy rains means additional water flooding into the Reservoir.
Maybe they could use a bit less rain. And their Pandemic Lock Downs are getting more wide spread. Food shortages are beginning and prices are rising, as much as 10% in a month.
Things are not going well in the workers paradise of China. Meanwhile CCP touts how well they are doing as 10s of thousands of the party members are opting out of party membership!
I was looking at the reservoir and it seems to be a Long, big deep ditch with little surge storage capacity. Not a good thing for a major flood control structure on such a huge dranage river system,
“I was looking at the reservoir and it seems to be a Long, big deep ditch with little surge storage capacity. Not a good thing for a major flood control structure on such a huge dranage river system,”
Floods were not in the Five Year Plan. Maybe not in the Little Red Book either. So they don’t exist.
pgs
There is a bloke who posts over at Small Dead Animals whose father is a big dam builder. Seems he was offered this one and turned it down when he found that the CCP knew more than the geological maps. Took up a $2+ billion one inn southern Africa instead.
Seems one of the problems is bank erosion. From other sources seems also the dam is not pinned to bedrock. That might not be a good mixture to be downstream of if it has started leaking
@Another Ian; yes, saw that. Due to it’s underpinnings, IF that thing starts to move, it will continue until it fails. Very slowly at first, may take years to happen if they can lower the lake level enough, fast enough, But a concrete plug dam in sediment is doomed if it starts to move..
OK. All betting is closed on if the 3 Gorges dam will fail.
Bets are still being taken on the over/under.
I’m betting it will be under a month just based on the failure rate of other Chinese-made things. Ya gotta know somebody’s brother-in-law cut corners on the concrete they used.
@HR, you could be right, but I would bet on a second major flood year and not this one. Defective Major dams fail during the second or third assault and not the first one. But “the die is cast” each assault further weakens it.
I have always had great faith in the Chinese Bureaucratic ability cheat for short run gains and long term degradation of their society. Ask any Chinese, they will tell you, “Chinese will cheat if they can”. Winning now is the only way, screw the future for others.
So, p.g., I guess we can put you down for “Over 1 month.”
;o)
Not enough data yet for me to bet. As soon as we have leakage around or under the concrete, I’d say weeks. Until then, years.
Ahhh, but once the leakage starts, the over/under betting will be closed, E.M. ;o)
On the bright side, the bookies will then start taking bets on the day/hour/minute like they do for that ice-out in Alaska.
.
.
.
Seriously, with all that water, who is to say it hasn’t already started leaking under the dam? I also read somewhere last week that the Chinese admitted that a few areas of the dam had shifted, but I don’t put much credence behind the source of wherever I saw that because the CCP will never admit to anything potentially negative.
After the dam breaks, they’ll report, “There has been a slight, temporary increase in water levels downstream of the 3 Gorges dam. The good news is that flooding has been successfully reduced upstream of the 3 Gorges dam.”
I go with pg. Yes, it will fail. Just not this year. But when it does – OI Vey!