This site has now set out eight of China's weather warning colours — typhoons, heat, rain and fog, sandstorms and cold waves and snow and road ice. The two that account for most disrupted summer afternoons are missing.
The typhoon page even points at the first of them without naming it. It says a red typhoon warning "is not a strong wind advisory" — which implies there is one. There is.
Gale: the signal defined by what it is not#
The opening line of the standard is the whole idea:
大风（除台风外）预警信号分四级，分别以蓝色、黄色、橙色、红色表示。
The gale warning signal — typhoons excepted — has four grades, in blue, yellow, orange and red. China does not have one wind scale. It has two, separated not by the wind but by its cause.
The thresholds are given in 级 (jí), Beaufort force, and each colour carries two numbers: a sustained wind and a gust.
| Colour | Within | Sustained / gusts |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | 24 hours | Force 6+ / 7+ |
| Yellow | 12 hours | Force 8+ / 9+ |
| Orange | 6 hours | Force 10+ / 11+ |
| Red | 6 hours | Force 12+ / 13+ |
Each level also has an "already happening" limb — blue covers sustained force 6–7 or gusts 7–8 already occurring and likely to continue, and so on up the scale.
The orange gale guideline suspends things by building, not by wind#
Most Chinese defence guidelines close things when the weather crosses a number. The orange gale guideline closes them according to what they are made of:
房屋抗风能力较弱的中小学校和单位应当停课、停业，人员减少外出
Primary and secondary schools and workplaces whose buildings have weak wind resistance should suspend classes and business, and people should go out less.
Not all schools. Not schools in a named area. Schools in buildings that cannot take the wind. The other conditional closures in the eight signals this site covers are keyed to the forecast or to the place — the orange rainstorm suspends classes and business for units in dangerous areas. This one is keyed to the building.
Diff the orange and red guidelines and the rest of the pattern is familiar. Items 4 and 5 — cutting dangerous power supplies, securing outdoor objects and covering building materials; and airports, railways, motorways and water transport taking measures to safeguard traffic safety, with forest and grassland fire watch — are word for word identical at both colours. Item 1 adds 抢险 (qiǎngxiǎn), emergency rescue, at red, exactly as the cold wave guideline does. Only items 2 and 3 genuinely escalate: the conditional school closure becomes stay somewhere windproof and do not go out, and ships told to return to port become ships already in port deciding whether to move their crews ashore.
Lightning: three colours, and the clock runs out early#
The lightning scale has no blue — like fog, heat, sandstorm and road ice — and its standards are the least numerical in the system, because what is being forecast is an event rather than a quantity.
| Colour | Within | The test |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | 6 hours | Lightning activity possible, and capable of causing an incident |
| Orange | 2 hours | Lightning activity very likely, or already occurring and likely to continue |
| Red | 2 hours | Lightning activity extremely likely, or already strong and likely to continue |
Look at the window. Orange and red both look only two hours ahead — and orange is where the scale gets there, one colour earlier than any other signal China issues.
That matters for a claim made elsewhere on this site. The road-ice page says its red two-hour window ties the red fog signal for the shortest notice in the system. It does — but the field is larger than two: orange lightning, red lightning, red fog and red road ice all sit at two hours, and lightning is the only one of the four that reaches it below red.
In practice#
- Two wind signals means checking which one you have. A gale warning and a typhoon warning of the same colour describe the same sustained wind, but the gale one came with a lower gust threshold and less notice.
- Force 6 is where both wind scales start. Wind is also the thing most likely to stop a mountain: ropeways and large amusement rides run under their own operating rules rather than under the weather signal, so a blue gale warning is a reason to ring the operator rather than to read the colour.
- Two hours is the summer planning horizon. Orange lightning gives no more warning than red fog does, so an afternoon plan that depends on being outdoors is a plan made in the morning.
- Summer thunderstorms are a standing cause of Chinese flight delays, and what the airline owes you when they hit is a separate question from what the sky is doing.
- Get inside a building or a car, not under a tree. The regulator's own list of wrong places is trees, utility poles and tower cranes.
- Umbrellas down in open ground. It is in the guideline, and it is the one piece of Chinese weather advice most visitors would get wrong by instinct.
- Hong Kong and Macau run their own warning systems under their own rules, with their own names and thresholds, so none of the scales above applies to a day spent there.
Checked for newer, and what I could not read#
Both scales were read on the China Meteorological Administration's own signal pages, one page per signal, which carry the standard and the defence guideline for every colour. The four gale standards and the orange and red gale guidelines were retrieved twice, with different questions, and returned the same wording both times. The typhoon figures in the comparison table are the ones this site already published from the same instrument.
Both signals sit under China Meteorological Administration Order No. 16 of 12 June 2007, the same instrument behind every colour scale on this site. As at the last two checks of that order, no amendment to it was findable, and this page describes the version in force.
One limitation worth stating. The yellow and blue lightning guidelines are short and general — watch the weather, avoid outdoor activity, and departments do their jobs — so the concrete instructions quoted above belong to orange and red only. Reading them into a yellow signal would be reading in something the standard does not say.
Frequently asked questions#
What is a gale warning in China?#
A four-colour signal for strong wind that is not a typhoon — the standard says so in its first line. Blue is sustained force 6 or gusts 7 within 24 hours, yellow force 8 or gusts 9 within 12, orange force 10 or gusts 11 within 6, and red force 12 or gusts 13 within 6.
How is a gale warning different from a typhoon warning?#
The sustained-wind thresholds are identical at every colour. The gust thresholds on the gale scale are one Beaufort force lower at every colour, and the yellow and orange windows are half as long. Same wind, different trigger, less notice.
How many levels does the Chinese lightning warning have?#
Three — yellow, orange and red. There is no blue, the same way there is no blue for fog, heat, sandstorm or road ice. Yellow looks six hours ahead; orange and red both look only two.
What does an orange lightning warning tell you to do?#
Stay indoors with windows closed, or get into a building with lightning protection or into a car. Do not shelter under a tree, a utility pole or a tower crane. In open ground, do not put up an umbrella and do not carry farm tools, badminton rackets or golf clubs on your shoulder.
Does a Chinese gale warning close schools?#
At orange, conditionally and unusually: primary and secondary schools and workplaces whose buildings have weak wind resistance should suspend classes and business. It is the only closure condition among the signals this site covers that depends on the building rather than on the forecast.
Which Chinese weather warning gives the least notice?#
Four share the shortest window of two hours: orange lightning, red lightning, red fog and red road ice. Lightning is the only one that reaches two hours at orange rather than waiting for red, which makes it the earliest point in the system at which you have almost no lead time.