The weather

Shanghai sits on the Yangtze River Delta on China's East coast. The center of the city is about 20 miles from the ocean, the China Sea. The city is very flat and has many rivers, canals, streams and lakes. Many of these canals where built to help drain the delta where Shanghai is built.

Shanghai has a humid subtropical climate but also has four distinct seasons. Winters are chilly and damp with cold northwesterly winds from Siberia but has very little if any snow fall.  Summers are hot and humid with occasional downpours and experiences typhoons in late summer through September. The most pleasant seasons are Spring which can sometimes be rainy and Autumn which is generally sunny and dry. For a reference point Savannah Georgia is very close in latitude to Shanghai.

We arrived the first week of June and for most the month  we saw very little of the sun. Only on the rare occasion did the sun break through the cloud cover. We were told that June and July was the rainy season and we just assumed that this is pretty normal. I would compare it to English weather, over cast with periods of brightness. It is very humid and there always seems to be a haze in the sky.

 I use WeatherBug daily to view the days weather and the 3 day forecast. The forecast gives you the temperature, the humidity, the Dew point and the Feels like temperature.

I thought I would write a nice explanation about how all these terms come together but after reviewing several sites I found out that it is a little beyond me to do so. The bottom line is when you put all of these factors together and with temperatures in the mid 90's for most of the summer you get a Feel like temperature in the 103 to 107 range. The temperatures between night and day vary very little, usually a 5 to 10 degree change. To say the least we are looking forward to October when the temperatures will be cooler.

July was a complete surprise, it was sunny just about every day. Expats who have been here for a while said, that this has been the sunniest summer in many years. Were we lucky. Some reasons for the sunny sky's that we heard about was back to back to back typhoons earlier in the summer which perhaps cleared out the hazy clouds in combination with the slowing of the China economy. All around Shanghai there are many factories, steel plants and large manufacturing companies which we are told are not running at full capacity. 

Because of these beautful hot days the wave pool at our apartment complex has been a favorite hangout for families to cool off on the weekends. Here are several photos of a typical Saturday or Sunday at the pool.

picture taken from our apartment 

click on picture to enlarge

Add caption