Typhoon Koinu turns south off China’s coast, headed for Hainan

TYPHOON Koinu, which lashed Taiwan with rain and wind last week, on Sunday (Oct 8) turned south over the sea off the coast of China’s Guangdong province towards the resort island of Hainan, with its intensity nearly unchanged from a day earlier.

As at 10 am (0200 GMT), Koinu had yet to make landfall on the Chinese coast, maintaining its strength over water about 455 km north-east of the city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong, according to Chinese weather forecasters.

Koinu, packing gale-force winds of up to 144 kph, is expected to churn south along the coast of Guangdong at a pace of up to 10 km an hour, weakening gradually as it reaches Zhanjiang city and the southern island province of Hainan.

In the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong, authorities issued their third-highest wind alert as Koinu brought gale-force winds to the territory, with heavy showers expected throughout Sunday and Monday.

Koinu comes just a month after the financial hub was lashed by Typhoon Saola, which triggered Hong Kong’s highest “T10” storm alert.

Hong Kong’s weather observatory on Sunday warned of strong winds and intense rain bands as Koinu moved towards the Pearl River Estuary and was expected to skirt as close as 70 km south of the city before midnight.

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Typhoon Koinu’s “T8” signal – the third-highest in Hong Kong’s warning system – is triggered when a storm’s sustained wind speed goes up to 117 km an hour. The storm’s maximum sustained wind speed was observed at 145 km per hour. At 7 pm, the weather observatory raised the warning signal to “T9”.

Schools, daycare centres, cargo terminals, ferries and buses announced the suspension of operations for the day or in the afternoon. More than 30 flights had been cancelled at around 11 am (0300 GMT), according to the Hong Kong International Airport’s website.

Last week, Koinu, which means “puppy” in Japanese, killed one person and injured almost 400 people in Taiwan as it brushed past the south of the island.

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Chinese authorities are on high alert even though Koinu looked unlikely to travel inland towards populous cities.

The slow movement of the typhoon over the warm waters of southern China raises the potential for very heavy rainfall as storm clouds linger over the area for a relatively long time. REUTERS, AFP