Typhoon Yagi tracker: Deadly super typhoon nears landfall in China with airports, schools and markets closed

Four airports in northern Vietnam, including Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport, will be closed on Saturday, Vietnam’s civil aviation authority said.

Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport will remain closed from 10am to 7pm local time (3am to noon GMT).

Airports in the coastal cities of Quang Ninh and Haiphong will be shut from early Saturday until 4pm the same day, and the airport in Thanh Hoa will suspend services from midday until late Saturday, CAAV said.

Airports are also shut in the port city of Haiphong and the province of Quang Ninh, home to the UNESCO heritage site Ha Long Bay and many large factories.

About 240 domestic and 70 international flights would be suspended to “ensure absolute safety” and “prevent the impact of the storm on the technical infrastructure.”

Super Typhoon Yagi is expected to make landfall in Hainan in a few hours, marking the most severe storm to hit the island since 2014.

Before Yagi, the last super typhoon to hit Hainan was Rammasun, which killed 88 people and caused over 44 billion yuan ($6.25 billion) in damages.

Following a similar path as Rammasun, Yagi formed over the warm waters east of the Philippines and was projected to arrive as a Category 4 storm, bringing winds strong enough to overturn vehicles, uproot trees, and damage infrastructure.

Landfalls of this magnitude are rare for Hainan, where only nine out of 106 typhoons between 1949 and 2023 were classified as super typhoons.

In Hainan, a tropical holiday island in southern China, residents were bracing for the powerful storm.

Schools were shut for the second day and flights were halted as the storm inched closer.

The province’s meteorological service expected Yagi to make landfall somewhere between the province’s Wenchang city and Xuwen county in neighboring Guangdong province later Friday.

People built sandbag barriers outside buildings to guard against possible floods and reinforced their windows with tape on Thursday, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.

The official China Daily said classes, work, transportation and businesses were suspended in parts of the province as early as Wednesday evening.

Some tourist attractions were closed and all flights at its international airport in Haikou city were grounded on Friday.

Trading on the stock market, bank services and schools were halted in Hong Kong after the city’s weather authority raised a No. 8 typhoon signal for Typhoon Yagi, the third-highest warning under the city’s weather system.

The warning will stay in place until noon before potentially getting downgraded as the storm moves away from Hong Kong.

Super Typhoon Yagi is inching closer to China’s southern coast as it is set to make landfall today.

Packing winds of 152mph, the storm is one of the strongest in Asia this year and equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane.

The storm is moving at a speed of 20km and is about to make landfall somewhere between Hainan’s Wenchang city and Xuwen county in neighbouring Guangdong province this afternoon.

Yagi has maintained its intensity as a super typhoon and is likely to weaken slightly as it interacts with land, but it will still hit the region with significant force.

After China, Yagi will move towards Laos and Vietnam.

Here’s the storm’s path:

Powerful gales and heavy rain from Super Typhoon Yagi drenched southern China on Friday, with schools shut for the second day and flights cancelled.

China’s government sent task forces to Guangdong and Hainan to guide flood and typhoon prevention, official news agency Xinhua said as authorities issued high risk warnings for geological disasters in northern Shanxi, southern Guangdong and most areas of Hainan island.

In Hainan’s capital Haikou, streets were deserted as people stayed indoors, photographs on social media showed.

A map from Accuweather shows the worst of the storm sitting east, west and south of the island of Hainan, and just off Vietnam.

Residents of the city of Haikou on the island of Hainan are in the direct line of super-typhoon Yagi, it’s claimed.

“This is a very dangerous situation for the city of Haikou, #Hainan, a city that has 2 million people who are in great danger as it looks like Typhoon #Yagi is making a direct aim on it,” said @StormHQwx, a social media account that gives storm forecasts and analysis.