End of plum rain season heralds hot days to come

Shanghai's plum rain season will end on Thursday, indicating the arrival of the hottest days of the year. There will be about six straight days with temperatures possibly reaching 38 degree Celsius, Shanghai Meteorological Bureau said on Tuesday.

The bureau triggered a yellow alert for high temperatures at noon on Tuesday. The benchmark Xujiahui Station reported 35.1 degrees, making Tuesday the year's first high-temperature day.

The bureau also issued a yellow alert for thunderstorm in the afternoon. There will be showers or rainstorms at night with heavy rainfall in certain regions.

The weather will be the same on Wednesday, with both high temperatures and thunderstorms. Humidity will be 50 to 90 percent.

The plum rain season started on June 19 and lasted 15 days, bringing abundant rainfall, frequent rainstorms and unbalanced rainfall as the rain band remained in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River, the bureau said.

The average rainfall in this plum rain season was 20 percent more than usual and the rainfall in downtown areas 30 percent more than the average in previous years. There were eight major rainfalls in downtown areas, accounting for over 70 percent of total in this plum rain season.