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Mia Nurmamat

The southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen just recorded its wettest July in 31 years, with small businesses and airline passengers feeling the effects.
Last month’s deluge was bad news for Yuan Zhang, who runs a small breakfast shop near a subway station in the city. Her monthly profit more than halved as weeks of persistent rain kept customers away.
She spent 200,000 yuan (US$27,900) setting up the eatery, which opened last year, and made monthly profits of more than 10,000 yuan last summer.
After unusually persistent rain began in April, her monthly profit fell to just over 8,000 yuan and it continued to slide through May, June and July.
“The shop is only about 100 metres (328 feet) from the metro station,” Zhang said. “On a normal day that’s nothing, but in heavy rain people simply don’t want to walk over.”
Her experience reflects a broader trend across southern China, where restaurant owners have taken to social media to complain that weeks of rain have cut foot traffic and hurt sales.
Some of China’s southern provinces have experienced their wettest and most persistent rainy seasons in recent years, disrupting transport and weighing on offline consumption.
Heavy rain saw the departure delay rate at Shenzhen Baoan International Airport hit 87.9 per cent on July 7, according to Flight Master, a Chinese aviation data provider.
Zhuhai Jinwan Airport saw 82.8 per cent of departures delayed on the same day, placing both among the worst-performing major airports in the country.




More wet weather could be on the way later this year, with the China Meteorological Administration warning that the current El Nino – a warming of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean – could be the strongest such event in 150 years.
El Nino cycles cause worldwide changes in winds and rainfall patterns and erratic weather. While they are often associated with reduced rainfall in parts of the western Pacific, the timing of this year’s event could favour increased rainfall in southern China this winter.
The Hong Kong Observatory says that because the cycles affect atmospheric circulation over the northern part of the South China Sea, they generally bring more rainfall to coastal parts of southern China between December and May.
Jim W. Huang, founder of climate risk consultancy ClimateHedge, said extreme weather had evolved from “an occasional operational disruption into a recurring network-wide business risk” for the aviation industry.
“El Nino should be understood as a seasonal risk amplifier, rather than the sole cause of an individual storm, typhoon or rainstorm,” Huang said, adding that the climate pattern changed the probability of extreme weather.
Heavy rain, thunderstorms and strong winds could reduce airport and airspace capacity, forcing aircraft to divert, enter holding patterns or divert to alternative airports.
“The economic impact is not limited to the first group of cancelled flights,” Huang said, adding that diversions, longer routing and disrupted aircraft and crew schedules could ripple across airline networks, increasing fuel consumption and operating costs long after the initial disruption.
Huang also cited a study by researchers from Ocean University of China, published in Nature Communications in 2023, that estimated the El Nino in 2015-16 – the last extreme event before this year – ultimately caused about US$3.9 trillion in cumulative global production losses over the following three years.
China’s Ministry of Emergency Management has said that floods and geological disasters caused 33.87 billion yuan in direct economic losses in the country during the first half of this year.


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Shenzhen’s wettest July in more than three decades saw foot traffic plummet and also caused severe disruption to airline schedules


Shenzhen’s wettest July in more than three decades saw foot traffic plummet and also caused severe disruption to airline schedules.


South China tech hub’s wet summer puts damper on small business profits

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Shenzhen’s wettest July in more than three decades saw foot traffic plummet and also caused severe disruption to airline schedules

Shenzhen’s wettest July in more than three decades saw foot traffic plummet and also caused severe disruption to airline schedules