As East Asia braced for a new round of severe weather on Friday, powerful Typhoon Bavi was tracking steadily toward China’s eastern coastline, arriving on the heels of a catastrophic week that has already claimed dozens of lives across multiple regions of the country.
The storm, which currently boasts maximum sustained winds of 162 kilometers per hour (101 miles per hour), was initially projected to pass north of Taiwan, bringing intense, prolonged rainfall to the island’s 23 million residents starting Friday evening and continuing through Saturday. In preparation for the incoming bad weather, Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, suspended all classes for Friday, while hundreds of fishing vessels have been secured and berthed closely together in northern Taiwanese ports. According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, dozens of commercial flights bound for Japan, Hong Kong and other regional destinations have been canceled through Saturday, though a small number of services remain operational as of Friday.
Following Bavi’s current northwest trajectory, the storm will first pass over remote Japanese islands before skirting the northern edge of Taiwan on Saturday. Forecasters predict the typhoon will make landfall Saturday night south of Shanghai, near the provincial boundary between Fujian and Zhejiang, two populous eastern Chinese provinces.
Local officials have already enacted sweeping emergency preparedness measures to mitigate potential damage. Official state news outlet Xinhua News Agency reported that more than 17,000 residents have already been evacuated from high-risk coastal and low-lying areas in Zhejiang, while 170,000 professional rescue workers have been placed on high standby to respond to emergencies. In Fujian, authorities have suspended multiple inter-island and cross-strait ferry routes due to dangerous wind speeds and choppy seas, and issued an urgent order for all ocean-going fishing vessels to return to sheltered ports before the storm arrives.
Bavi has weakened significantly since earlier this week, when it raged as a category 5 supertyphoon that brought destructive, life-threatening winds to Saipan and other U.S. Pacific territories.
The approaching storm marks the third major weather-related disaster to hit China in seven days, after two separate deadly events that have already claimed 50 lives. On Thursday, southern Chinese authorities confirmed 39 people had been killed in widespread flooding triggered by Tropical Storm Maysak, which dumped record-breaking rainfall across large swathes of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region over several days. The torrential rainfall overwhelmed local water infrastructure, causing multiple reservoir breaches and the dramatic partial collapse of a dam in Hengzhou. The failure sent fast-moving muddy floodwater surging through surrounding communities, trapping hundreds of residents on the second floors and higher levels of buildings for days, many cut off from electricity, before search and rescue teams could reach them.
A further 11 people lost their lives in central China’s Hubei province after severe thunderstorms and tornadoes swept through the region on Monday night, leaving widespread destruction in their wake. In a separate, non-storm-related tragedy, a sudden landslide killed 21 forestry workers working in the mountainous terrain of northwestern China’s Gansu province on Tuesday.