On Thursday, China braced for Typhoon Doksuri’s impending landfall, closing schools and businesses in some coastal cities, as the national observatory updated its most severe weather alert following overnight torrential rains in the country’s southwest.
According to Fujian provincial meteorological officials, the impending typhoon is predicted to make landfall on China’s southeast coast in the early hours of Friday.
As of 12:00 p.m. (0400 GMT), Doksuri was categorized as a strong typhoon, with maximum winds of 180 kilometres (112 miles) per hour as it hurtled northwest through the Taiwan Strait into Fujian province.
Doksuri was a super typhoon at one point, but it lost part of its strength after lashing the northern Philippines’ shoreline on Wednesday, breaking river banks and leaving millions without power.
According to the Philippines’ disaster department, Doksuri killed five persons.
On Thursday, three coastal cities in Fujian province closed schools, shops, and factories, while flood control officials in one of them, Xiamen, warned of a serious impact.
However, the China Meteorological Administration predicted that it will be weaker than Typhoon Meranti, which struck China’s eastern coast in 2016, killing at least 11 people.
Prior to Doksuri’s landfall, fifteen provinces and city-level administrative units in China have been affected by severe weather, including thunderstorms, torrential rainfall, gales, and hail.
After severe rains in the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan, as well as the nearby metropolis of Chongqing, Beijing initiated emergency flood control operations in the country’s southwest on Wednesday night.
According to videos circulating on Chinese social media, heavy floods in the city of Luzhou, Sichuan province, washed cars against tree trunks.
Passenger ships and fishing boats have also become stranded in coastal Zhejiang province, just north of Fujian.
Meanwhile, southern Taiwan closed businesses and schools on Thursday, and airlines canceled hundreds of flights as Typhoon Doksuri churned past the island on its way to China.
On Thursday, Taiwan’s weather agency issued wind and rain warnings for the island’s southern and eastern regions, including the main port city of Kaohsiung, where businesses and schools were closed and landslip warnings were issued.
In Taiwan, all domestic flights and ferry lines were suspended, while over 100 international flights were canceled or delayed. Railway services between southern and eastern Taiwan have been suspended.
More than 5,700 people were evacuated as a precaution, largely in Taiwan’s hilly south and east, where more than 0.7 metres of rain was reported in certain regions and up to 1 metre was anticipated.
The typhoon knocked out power to almost 49,000 Taiwanese households, although the majority of them have since been restored.
“Typhoon Doksuri should not be underestimated”, Kaohsiung city mayor Chen Chi-mai stated late Wednesday in a Facebook post.
“The police and military will assist in the effort of forced evacuation if needed”, he said, referring to the threat of severe rain in hilly areas.
In the midst of increasing military tensions with neighboring China, Taiwan’s armed forces continued a large-scale anti-landing rehearsal on a beach near the important Taipei Port just outside the capital, simulating the expulsion of an enemy force with ground soldiers and tanks.
Parts of Taiwan’s biggest annual Han Kuang exercises and air-raid drills, which began on Monday, have been affected by the storm, with authorities canceling some exercises citing safety concerns and the need to prepare for the typhoon.
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