Typhoon Goni lashed the shores of eastern China on Sunday after wreaking havoc in Taiwan and the Philippines, where the storm left ten dead.
On Monday morning, Shanghai’s Municipal Meteorological Station issued an orange alert after more than 156 millimetres of rain fell on the mainland metropolis overnight.
The hardest-hit districts upgraded storm alerts to red later in the morning—the highest alert on the city’s three-level grading system.
Streets throughout the city were submerged by the torrential downpour, but some of the most dramatic flooding occurred at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport.
Runways were turned into rivers and and cabin crew had to traverse makeshift bridges formed by tables and chairs to get to work.
Dozens of flights were delayed or cancelled out of Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, already notorious as the country’s least punctual airport with an abysmal 37 per cent of flights leaving on time.
One WeChat user in Shanghai even claimed to have captured images of fish swimming in murky flood waters outside a window.
