Typhoon Maysak triggers deadly floods and rare tornadoes across China

On Sunday afternoon, rain began falling on Renhe village in Guangxi province, in southern China. The villagers knew rain. They had seen it before. But this time the water did not stop. It rose steadily through the evening, reached their knees by early Monday morning, and by dawn had swallowed the first floors of their homes entirely. A woman named Zhou, whose family lived there, later described the moment to the BBC: the floods came so fast that people had no time to gather food before fleeing. By then, tens of thousands across Guangxi had already been forced from their homes as Typhoon Maysak swept through the region over the weekend, swelling rivers and breaching dam walls. At least four people in the immediate area had died.

The scale of the disaster widened as reports came in from across the province. The city of Nanning and its surrounding villages lay inundated, with residents calling for rescue from their rooftops. State media reported that at least 17 people had died overall, hundreds more were injured, and roughly 60,000 had been evacuated, though officials estimated the total number affected at closer to 90,000. President Xi Jinping ordered "all out" rescue and relief operations. Yet the response was already straining under the weight of need. Zhou's family members remained trapped in their homes in Renhe with limited food. Her four-month-old niece had gone more than a day without milk. Other villagers had gathered at higher ground but were running out of supplies. "There are too many villages affected, and not enough rescue workers," Zhou told the BBC.

A woman named Huang from the town of Yunbiao described a similar nightmare. The floods in her area had submerged villages in just ten minutes. "We simply couldn't rescue everyone in time," she said. "There were too few rescue personnel, and the lifeboats they brought were too small, they couldn't travel very far." Most residents had lost all contact with family members stranded elsewhere—no internet, no electricity, no way to know if loved ones were alive. State media broadcast footage of rescuers in life vests and helmets navigating inflatable boats through the murky water. But the scale of the disaster meant that for many, help had not yet arrived.

The typhoon's reach extended far beyond Guangxi. Hundreds of kilometers to the north, in Hubei province, the collision of cold air from the north with warm air pushed south by Maysak spawned something meteorologists said was rare for the region: tornadoes. The last one recorded there had occurred in 2021. Videos circulating on Chinese social media showed strong winds tearing through the cities of Ezhou and Huanggang, hurling outdoor furniture through the air and sending electrical sparks flying. In one clip filmed from a restaurant, diners screamed as tables and chairs became projectiles. In Huanggang, a man in a high-rise apartment was struck by wind that shattered his windows. He was sucked out of his apartment along with his furniture and fell twelve stories to the ground. He was reported to be in intensive care. A student in the same city told the BBC he had thought it was merely an ordinary thunderstorm until he saw objects flying past his dormitory window. "A lot of students were cut by flying glass," he said. "It wasn't until everything had finally stopped that I realized I had just lived through a disaster."

The human toll extended beyond the immediate casualties. Huang sent the BBC a video from her village's WeChat group showing residents alarmed as a large black snake slithered across their mud-covered floor. The floods had not only displaced people but had also freed snakes from farms in the region—certain species are raised in China for traditional medicine, meat, and anti-venom production. Residents now faced the additional hazard of venomous wildlife in the floodwaters.

For those separated from family, the uncertainty was perhaps the cruelest aspect of the disaster. Zhou had asked a friend to swim through the floodwaters to check on her relatives. "He shouted to my father from afar and learned that they are fine for now, though they are surrounded by water," she said. But she did not know the fate of elderly neighbors and their two young granddaughters who lived down the road. "Even by swimming, people can't spot them." A young woman who requested anonymity told the BBC she had not heard from her parents in Gantang town for more than 24 hours. The last message she had received said they were sheltering on the third floor of their building, but the water had already reached the second floor. "I can't reach out to them. I don't know their situation at all. I lost contact with them on Monday morning," she said. "Now I'm just fretting helplessly, there is nothing I can do."

Maysak was the first typhoon to make landfall in China during the 2026 season, characterized by meteorologists as sudden in onset and intense in its short-duration winds. But it would not be the last. Super Typhoon Bavi was already churning across the Pacific, on course to hit China's eastern coast later in the week. Authorities in Nanning warned that "extremely heavy rain" could hamper ongoing rescue efforts. Extreme weather events, which experts increasingly link to climate change, have become a mounting threat to China's residents and its economy, particularly its trillion-dollar agriculture sector. As residents in flooded areas waited for aid and rescue, many remained desperate simply to know whether their loved ones had survived.