At least 20 people have died and a further 27 are missing after flooding in the mountains surrounding Beijing, according to Chinese state media.
State broadcaster CCTV said authorities closed train stations on Tuesday and evacuated people from vulnerable communities to school gyms after days of heavy rain.
Homes have been flooded, roads torn apart and cars piled into stacks.
The level of rainfall is rarely seen in Beijing, which generally enjoys moderate, dry summers but has experienced record-breaking extended days of high temperatures this summer.
Muddy water surging down streets washed away cars in the Mentougou district on Beijing’s western edge.
“The cars parked on the street floated and got washed away,” said resident Liu Shuanbao.
“A couple of cars parked behind my apartment building disappeared in just one minute.”
Emergency workers used bulldozers on Tuesday to clear streets while residents waded through mud.
“Neither officials nor ordinary people expected the rain to be so heavy,” said another Mentougou resident, Wu Changpo.
“There were a lot of landslides and flooded villages. I cried repeatedly seeing these reports.”
Flooding in other parts of northern China which rarely see such large amounts of rain have led to scores of deaths.
Seasonal flooding hits large parts of China every summer, particularly in the semi-tropical south, but some northern regions have reported the worst floods in 50 years.
Indicating the level of urgency, President Xi Jinping issued an order for local governments to go “all out” to rescue those trapped and minimise the loss of life and damage to property.
State media reported that 11 people died and 27 are missing in the mountains to the west of Beijing’s city centre.
Nine other deaths were reported in Hebei province, just outside the metropolis and the source of much of its food and labour.
State broadcaster CCTV said that more than 500,000 people have been impacted by the floods, though they did not say how many had been moved to other locations.
In early July, at least 15 people were killed by floods in the south western region of Chongqing while 5,590 people in the far north western province of Liaoning had to be evacuated.
In the central province of Hubei, rainstorms have trapped people in their vehicles and homes.
China’s deadliest and most destructive floods in recent history were in 1998 when 4,150 people died, most of them along the Yangtze River.
In 2021, more than 300 people died in flooding in the central province of Henan when record rainfall inundated the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, turning streets into rushing rivers and flooding at least part of a subway line.
