Deadly flooding hit central China after torrential rainfall Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features the deadly aftermath of a slow-moving storm in central China. 

The false-color photo captures northern Henan province, where the storm dumped a year’s worth of rain in three days in the province’s capital city of Zhengzhou. To the north, the city of Xinxiang received 10 inches of rain within two hours.

Deadly flooding hit central China after torrential rainfall According to NASA, the region’s network of rivers and reservoirs overflowed, and floodwaters submerged transportation infrastructure and buildings, trapping many people and affecting millions.

Flooding is visible across central China in this photograph, which was taken on July 26, 2021 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. China emerged as one of the world’s first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world’s foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China’s political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer