A tornado in the Chinese city of Guangzhou has killed at least five people. Another 33 were injured, Chinese state media reported.
The tornado reportedly hit the Guangdong Province capital in the south of the country at around 3 p.m. Local time (2 a.m. EST) on Saturday, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.
The Chinese province of Guangdong is the most populous in the country, and is home to almost 130 million people. The province also has thousands of factories and facilities that cater for China’s export sector.
Tornadoes are not an unusual occurrence. In September last year, a tornado killed at least 10 people in Suqian, in the eastern province of Jiangsu. In 2021, more than a dozen people died after two tornadoes hit the country on the same day.
However, reports of severe weather phenomena in China have been mounting in recent years.
Earlier this week, severe flooding caused by torrential rains in Guangdong left at least four people dead, although the actual number of casualties could be much higher. The flooding has reportedly been the worst the province experienced in seven decades.
Last year, the heaviest rain since records began 140 years ago flooded cities in the Pearl River Delta.
In May 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic, severe weather struck Beijing ahead of the Chinese regime’s most important series of annual political meetings in the city, resulting in heavy storms, dark skies, hail, and heavy thunderstorms.