A single tropical storm system pushed ashore in eastern China three separate times over the course of a week, forcing tens of thousands of evacuations before its heavy rain triggered a deadly mudslide hundreds of miles inland. The storm’s repeated landfalls and the flooding rainfall that followed left authorities in three provinces managing overlapping emergencies through the first week of September 2026.
Three Landfalls in One Storm Track
The system, the eighteenth named typhoon of the 2026 Pacific season, first came ashore twice in Zhejiang Province on August 28 before weakening slightly and looping back toward the coast. Its third and final landfall came around 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, September 3, when the storm crossed the coastline near Zhangpu County in Zhangzhou, a coastal prefecture in Fujian Province south of where it first struck. The unusual multi-landfall track kept coastal authorities on alert for the better part of a week, since each pass brought fresh rounds of wind and rain to areas still recovering from the previous one.
Storm trackers noted that the repeated landfalls reflected the system’s erratic path along the East China coastline rather than a single sustained strike, a pattern that made forecasting the storm’s next move more difficult for provincial emergency managers who had to plan for renewed impacts each time it approached land again. Meteorologists tracking the system said its slow overall forward speed, rather than its peak intensity, was what allowed it to dump such sustained rainfall across multiple provinces in a single week.
Evacuations Ahead of the Fujian Landfall
Ahead of the third landfall, authorities in Fujian moved more than 83,000 people out of low-lying and flood-prone areas as continuous heavy rain raised the risk of flash flooding and landslides across the province, according to International Business Times Singapore. The evacuation order covered coastal communities directly in the storm’s path as well as inland areas where saturated ground from days of rain had already raised the danger of slope failures.
The scale of the evacuation reflected how much rain had already fallen in the region by the time the storm made its final approach. Provincial officials had been monitoring rainfall totals for days, and the decision to move tens of thousands of residents came as forecasts pointed to sustained downpours continuing well after the storm’s center passed over Fujian and moved further inland toward neighboring provinces.
A Deadly Mudslide Two Days Later
The storm’s rainfall did not stop causing damage once it moved past the coast. Two days after the Fujian landfall, a mudslide struck Mingkeng Village in Suichuan County, in inland Jiangxi Province, at around 4 a.m. on September 5. The slide killed at least three people and left nine others missing, according to a report from WFTV. Rescue crews were dispatched to search the debris field for the missing as the broader region continued dealing with saturated hillsides left behind by the storm’s rain bands.
The Jiangxi mudslide illustrated how a storm’s most dangerous impacts can arrive well after landfall and far from the coast, as rainfall that soaks into hillsides over several days can trigger slope failures long after the wind and immediate coastal flooding from a typhoon have subsided. Emergency crews in the county were still working through the debris field days after the slide, hampered by continued unstable ground on the surrounding slopes.
Rainfall Reaching Into Hunan Province
The storm’s inland rain bands stretched beyond Jiangxi into neighboring Hunan Province, where torrential rain tied to Saudel’s remnants contributed to at least two additional deaths as flooding and unstable slopes affected communities well outside the storm’s original coastal path. Combined with the Suichuan mudslide, the toll from Saudel’s inland rainfall alone reached at least five dead and nine missing across the two provinces, separate from any casualties directly tied to the three coastal landfalls.
The spread of fatal flooding into a second inland province underscored how a weakening tropical system can still carry enough moisture to cause serious harm hundreds of miles from where it made landfall, particularly across a mountainous interior where saturated slopes remain a hazard for days after the rain itself tapers off. Local governments in both provinces issued renewed warnings for residents in mountainous districts to watch for signs of ground movement even after the heaviest rain had passed.
A Season Already Marked by Repeat Storms
Saudel’s designation as the eighteenth typhoon of the 2026 season places it in a year that has already produced an active stretch of storms moving through the western Pacific and into the East China coastline. Its triple landfall track, striking Zhejiang twice before curving into Fujian, is an atypical pattern that added extra strain on regional disaster response resources already stretched by earlier storms in the same season.
Provincial authorities in Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi have not released a combined damage estimate covering all three landfalls and the subsequent inland flooding, though the displacement figures from Fujian alone indicate the storm’s rain, rather than its wind, was the primary driver of the emergency response across the affected region. Local officials in each province have said cleanup and recovery work is expected to continue for weeks given the geographic spread of the damage, with crews in Jiangxi and Hunan focused on stabilizing slopes considered at continued risk of failure.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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