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       Typhoon Heads for China After Hitting the Philippines and Grazing Taiwan

       China’s coastal cities are bracing for Typhoon Doksuri, which is expected to make landfall on Friday, packing torrential rain and wind speeds equivalent to those of a Category 1 hurricane.

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       One video showed a house floating through a town. In another, several motorcycles on a shaky ferry toppled over. Residents in other areas waded through the floodwaters with belongings, including livestock. CreditCredit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By Mike Ives, John Yoon and Siyi Zhao

       July 27, 2023, 3:26 a.m. ET

       Typhoon Doksuri, a tropical cyclone moving through the Pacific Ocean with wind speeds equivalent to those of a Category 1 hurricane, was passing the sea southwest of Taiwan on Thursday, slowly en route to China after battering the Philippines.

       The storm was forecast to make landfall on China’s southeastern coast on Friday morning local time, according to the National Meteorological Center, which issued a red alert, its most severe warning for typhoons, for southeastern China on Wednesday.

       China’s coastal cities started bracing for torrential rains, suspending buses, bullet trains and ferries. Xiamen, a coastal city of Fujian Province, ordered residents to shelter in place and to keep their vehicles off the streets after 10 p.m. on Thursday. Fujian was expected to be hit with the heaviest rainfall of up to 15 inches, forecasters said.

       As the storm churned 100 miles southwest of Taiwan, the island’s weather bureau issued heavy rain and wind advisories for the southern regions, including the major port city of Kaohsiung, where business and schools were ordered to close and where thousands of households lost power on Thursday. More than five inches of rain fell in some areas.

       Category 5 4 3 2 1 Tropical storm

       Area of tropical-storm-force winds Forecast path

       Source: Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System

       Note: All times are in the time zones of China and Taiwan, which are both 12 hours ahead of Eastern time.

       By Madison Dong

       The storm has weakened since sweeping through the northern Philippines at Category 4 strength on Wednesday. There, it set off extensive flooding and landslides, killing at least five people, injuring at least two others and displacing more than 26,000 residents, the national disaster agency said on Thursday.

       Villagers in the northern Philippines waded through neck-deep floodwaters, and dozens of homes were damaged. News footage showed a house being carried away by a swollen river. About 330,000 people were affected across the country, with more rain expected throughout the week.

       Doksuri had a maximum sustained wind speed of 86 miles per hour on Thursday morning in China, according to the United States military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii. That would make it a Category 1 storm on the five-category scale that is used to measure hurricanes in the Atlantic.

       The storm, continuing to lose strength, was moving northwest at about 9 m.p.h. as of 11 a.m. on Thursday, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.

       Doksuri, meaning “eagle,” is a name contributed to the Typhoon Committee by South Korea. In the Philippines, where the government has used a parallel typhoon naming system for decades, Doksuri is known as Egay.

       A tropical cyclone is a storm, typically one with a diameter of a couple hundred miles, that begins over a tropical ocean and generates violent winds, torrential rain and high waves. The term “hurricane” applies to those that form in the North Atlantic, the northeastern Pacific, the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, while “typhoon” applies to ones that develop in the northwestern Pacific and affect Asia.

       As Doksuri heads toward China this week, heavy rain and high winds are also forecast for later this week in Hong Kong, the Chinese territory that sits off the mainland’s southern coast and west of both Fujian Province and Taiwan.

       Orlando Mayorquin contributed reporting.

       Mike Ives is a reporter for The Times based in Seoul, covering breaking news around the world. More about Mike Ives

       John Yoon reports from the Seoul newsroom of The Times. He previously reported for the coronavirus tracking team, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2021. He joined The Times in 2020. More about John Yoon

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