Flood water passes the Three Gorges Dam Photo: Xinhua

A third flood peak is forming along China's Yangtze River with heavy rain falling in the upper reaches, the flood control and drought relief center of Central China's Hubei Province said on Thursday. The local authority has urged local residents to remain vigilant as the high-level water will remain until early August.

The Jingjiang Levee in Jingzhou city of Hubei Province, a major flood control project in the Yangtze River, and its following levees, will face increasing risks and water of a high level for an extended period of time, as the Three Gorges Reservoir may further increase its discharge, yicai.com reported.

The flood control along the river is faced with a very serious situation. The Changjiang Water Resources Commission upgraded the warning level in the Jingjiang part of the Yangtze River, which runs from Hubei to Hunan, from blue to yellow on Thursday.

The water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir reached 159.02 meters as of 9 am on Friday, while the outflow hit 45,800 cubic meters per second, an increase of 2,500 cubic meters per second compared to 8 pm on Thursday.

The flood control and drought relief center in Hubei urged the relevant authorities to closely monitor the Yangtze River's water level in addition to the five lakes and medium-sized rivers in the province.

The second flood peak, which formed on July 17, had just passed Hubei's capital city of Wuhan on Thursday night, but the water level in Wuhan had dropped. Experts explained that since the Three Gorges Reservoir's flood peak had dropped, the downstream discharge of water was more fluent, and therefore it did not peak in Wuhan.  

As of Tuesday, more than 45.52 million people in 27 provinces including Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Guangdong, Chongqing and Sichuan have been affected and 35,000 houses collapsed since the main flood season started in China on June 1, China's Ministry of Emergency Management announced on Tuesday.

The direct economic losses caused by the floods has hit 116.05 billion yuan, down 5 percent compared to the average number for the same period in the past five years. 142 people have reportedly died or are missing in the floods, down 56.5 percent compared to the average number.