Typhoon Haikui made landfall around 3:00 p.m. local time (07:00 GMT) this Sunday in southeastern Taiwan, with winds of up to 191 kilometers per hour that have caused alerts in much of the island, reports the official CNA news agency.
An hour before making landfall, the storm – which reaches the level of a “very strong typhoon” – was moving at about 22 kilometers per hour in a west-northwest direction, according to data from the Taiwanese Central Meteorological Bureau (CWB).
The aforementioned institution predicts that Haikui will reach the Formosa Strait tonight, although the outer edge of the storm will not leave the island until the late hours of Monday.
The CWB recalled that Haikui is the first major storm to hit Taiwan since Typhoon Bailu in August 2019.
Authorities evacuated hundreds of people from the Taitung area, where Haikui made landfall, and also suspended operations on at least three railway lines on the island.
Parts of southern Taiwan are under warnings for “extremely heavy or torrential” rain, which could reach up to 700 millimeters (mm) in some mountainous areas.
According to the hurricane monitoring platform Zoom Earth, Haikui could reach the coasts of China – south of Xiamen, a major city in the southeastern province of Fujian – in the early hours of Tuesday, weakening the typhoon to a severe tropical storm.
The neighboring province of Canton and the regions of Hong Kong and Macau, further south, remained on high alert this weekend due to the passage of super typhoon Saola, which has already become a tropical depression after making landfall around noon in this Saturday.
