HONG KONG – Super typhoon Yagi on Friday moved towards China’s island province of Hainan, as authorities prepared for what could be the strongest storm to hit the country’s southern coast in a decade.
The typhoon was expected to make landfall later on Friday along the coastal areas from Hainan — a popular holiday destination — to neighboring Guangdong province, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said, citing authorities.
The ministry of water resources on Thursday raised its emergency response to flooding in both provinces to the third-highest tier.
“Yagi is likely to be the strongest typhoon to hit China’s southern coast since 2014, making flood and prevention work very challenging,” Xinhua said, according to a meeting held by flood officials.
Packing wind speeds of more than 240 kilometers per hour, the typhoon “is equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane,” according to NASA Earth Data.
Meanwhile, China logged its hottest August since 1961 this year, the national weather service said.
“In August this year, China experienced prolonged and extreme high temperatures,” the China Meteorological Administration said.
“The national average temperature was the highest for the same period since 1961,” it added.
The national average temperature in August was 22.6 degrees Celsius), 1.5C higher than the same period in a typical year, the national weather service told reporters Thursday.
“The northern regions experienced frequent and highly destructive rainstorms, while large-scale heatwaves persisted in the southern regions,” Jia Xiaolong, deputy director of the National Climate Center said.
China is the leading emitter of the greenhouse gas emissions scientists say are driving global climate change.
Beijing has pledged to bring planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060.
