WITH Super Typhoon Chan-Hom looming outside Shanghai, all outdoor group activities planned for today have been suspended, while some people have been evacuated. When it hits land, the wind speed at the center is expected to top 58 meters per second.
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People on coastal fishing farms in Fujian province were also asked to move out yesterday morning.
On Friday morning, eastern time, Typhoon Chan-hom was just hours away from making landfall in China. And 28,764 ships were called back to port, confirmed the Provincial Flood Control Bureau.
APPHOTO XMAS804: Spectators watch strong waves ahead of the landfall of Typhoon Chan-Hom along the seashore in Wenling in eastern China’s Zhejiang province Friday July 10, 2015. It has been invaluable to tropical cyclone forecasters, showing where the strongest winds are located in storms.
When NASA’s Terra satellite passed over Typhoon Chan-Hom early on July 10 (EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a visible-light image of the storm that showed the eye had “re-opened”. Around six hours later, the typhoon’s eye will be nearly directly over Shanghai.
Almost a million people in eastern China’s Zhejiang province have been evacuated as super typhoon Chan-Hom approaches, media reported on Saturday.
The organizers of this year’s summer music festival said they canceled three concerts in Huangpu District as soon as the orange alert was issued.
Schools and government offices are closed on Friday in five cities in Taiwan, including Taipei and Taoyuan, the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration said in a statement late Thursday.
Several cities in the province were already reporting heavy rain and strong gales, the weather centre added.
“We recommend everyone does their best to use “squatting at home” tactics to welcome the typhoon”, the Shanghai government said in a posting on its official microblog.
More than 100 flights, train rides and ferry services have been canceled.
Traffic had thinned on the streets, though some people on motorcycles and even bicycles braved the rain, which blew down small branches.
The typhoon brought heavy rain to Shanghai as well as the provinces of Anhui and Fujian, besides Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the weather service said.
Chan-hom was expected to hit eastern China’s coastline early Saturday and is forecast to change course and head northeast toward Shanghai and the Korean peninsula.
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Chan-hom lashed Japan’s Okinawa island chain on Friday, leaving more than 20 people injured.
