Deadly Super Typhoon Yagi Makes Landfall in China's Hainan
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Asia's strongest storm this year, Super Typhoon Yagi, made landfall along the coast of China's Hainan province on Friday, bringing gales and heavy rain which shut schools for a second day and cancelled flights in the South China Sea region.
Packing maximum sustained winds of 234 km per hour near its center, Yagi registers as the world's second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024 so far, after the Category 5 Atlantic hurricane Beryl, and the most severe in the Pacific basin this year.
After more than doubling in strength since killing 16 people in the northern Philippines earlier this week, Yagi slammed into the city of Wenchang on Hainan island, Reuters reported.
The typhoon had shut schools, businesses and transport links in Hong Kong, Macau, Hainan and Guandong as well as airports in Vietnam, which it is predicted to hit, along with Laos, over the weekend.
Vietnam's Civil Aviation Authority said four airports in the north, including Hanoi's Noi Bai International, would be closed on Saturday due to the storm.
In the financial hub of Hong Kong, the stock exchange was shuttered while schools remained closed on Friday as a precautionary measure.
Yagi is the most severe storm to land in Hainan since 2014, when Typhoon Rammasun slammed into the island province as a Category Five tropical cyclone. Rammasun killed 88 people in Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan and caused economic losses of more than 44 billion yuan ($6.25 billion).
Yagi, which strengthened into a super typhoon on Wednesday night, is named after the Japanese word for goat and the constellation of Capricornus, a mythical creature that is half goat, half fish.