Warned of severe thunderstorms and strong winds, Beijingers braced for the worst yesterday but in the end, it was a pleasant anti-climax.

There were no torrents of rain or gale-force winds. Instead, Tropical Storm Matsa lost its venom as it embraced the city.

Rain began falling in most areas in the small hours of the morning and 12 hours earlier in the suburbs including Pinggu, Daxing and Tongzhou, with only moderate showers, a local weatherman said.

"Matsa was downgraded to a tropical low pressure system and touched Beijing gently 20 hours behind schedule," Guo Hu, an official from the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, said.

Rainfall yesterday averaged 20-40 millimeters in various parts and was a welcome relief for residents wilting under the heat of previous days.

The rain is expected to be gone by tomorrow and the mercury will start climbing again soon.

By yesterday morning, Matsa had moved to northeast China's Liaoning Province and made landfall in Dalian, a port city.

Rains or downpours are forecast for many areas in northeast China's Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, parts of north China's Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region and Hebei Province as well as Tianjin in the next few days, according to the National Meteorological Centre.

Beijing weather officials had, since the weekend, forecast that the city would face its worst thunderstorms and downpours in a decade.

The authorities made arrangements for the evacuation of 40,000 people in areas prone to flooding and landslides, 17 reservoirs were told to lower water levels and transport departments geared up to tackle disruption.

It is rare for Beijing to be hit by a major tropical storm. Only four typhoons have swept through the city since 1949, killing a total of 86 people.

Matsa, named after a Laotian fish, slammed into the eastern province of Zhejiang on Saturday, and caused extensive damage as it swept across east China's Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Fujian provinces, and Shanghai Municipality.

More than 25.5 million people were affected and about 2 million evacuated.

"The death toll yesterday rose to at least 19," a source with the Ministry of Civil Affairs said yesterday.

By yesterday afternoon, heavy rains had inundated more than 1.6 million hectares of farmland, toppled 46,000 houses and damaged another 142,000 homes, he said, adding that direct losses amounted to 14.5 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion), the highest so far in the storm season.

(China Daily August 10, 2005)