Super Typhoon Bavi nears East China as heavy rain, storms trigger alerts

The National Meteorological Center issued three weather warnings on Thursday, with Super Typhoon Bavi expected to strike China's eastern coast while torrential rain and severe convective weather threaten large areas farther north.

The center issued an orange typhoon alert, the second-highest level in China's four-tier weather warning system, for Bavi.

At 8 am, the typhoon's center was about 1,140 kilometers southeast of Keelong, Taiwan, packing maximum sustained winds of 198 kilometers per hour.

Bavi is forecast to make landfall on Saturday evening between Fuqing in Fujian province and Wenling in Zhejiang province, with winds of 137 to 162 km/h. It is then expected to move northwest while gradually weakening.

From Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon, gales are forecast to affect the Bashi Channel, the Taiwan Strait, waters east of Taiwan and the southern part of the East China Sea.

The center also issued a blue rainstorm alert, the lowest level in the four-tier system, warning of heavy to torrential rainfall from Thursday morning to Friday morning across a broad swath of the country.

The affected areas include parts of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning in Northeast China; parts of Hebei, Shandong and Shaanxi provinces and Tianjin; parts of Yunnan, Guangdong and Hainan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region; and parts of Qinghai province and the Xizang autonomous region.

Parts of central Liaoning, eastern Hebei and central Shandong are expected to receive 100 to 150 millimeters of rainfall.

Meanwhile, the center issued a yellow alert for severe convective weather, the second-lowest level in the four-tier system, warning of thunderstorms, hail and strong winds from Thursday morning to Friday morning across central and southern parts of Northeast China, northern and central-eastern North China, parts of the Yellow-Huaihe River Valley, the Yangtze-Huaihe River Valley, regions south of the Yangtze River and South China.

In central and southern Hebei and northern Shandong, thunderstorm winds could exceed 117 km/h, and the center said tornadoes could not be ruled out.

Weather China, a website affiliated with the China Meteorological Administration, said Bavi has maintained super typhoon strength for more than five days. Its circulation remains more than 1,200 km in diameter, with cloud cover spanning nearly 940,000 square kilometers — about nine times the land area of Zhejiang province.

On Saturday, Zhejiang and Fujian are expected to experience the storm's strongest winds and heaviest rainfall, with parts of southern Zhejiang and northeastern Fujian forecast to receive between 250 and 400 mm of rain.