Typhoon Wipha is making quick gains towards the coastline of Southeast China, resulting in a wave of storm warnings in Guangdong province’s coastal cities.
In Hong Kong, a typhoon signal No. 8 (the first of the year) has been issued and is expected to remain in effect for the rest of the day. A thunderstorm warning and an amber rainstorm warning are also in effect in the city.
Next door, in neighboring Shenzhen, the city’s meteorological authorities have triggered a yellow typhoon alert. Strong winds are expected to hammer the city, along with heavy rains that are forecasted to hang around until Friday.
Guangzhou currently has a yellow typhoon alert in force in Nansha district, according to the Guangzhou Meteorological Observatory, as well as a white warning in Panyu district.
Other cities in coastal Guangdong – from Zhanjiang to Shanwei – have also issued various typhoon warnings, ranging from white to yellow.
READ MORE: Shenzhen Issues First Typhoon Alert of 2019 Storm Season
According to this online storm tracking platform, Typhoon Wipha is expected to make landfall later today, while the center of the storm will reach northern Hainan and southwestern Guangdong sometime around 5am tomorrow morning. At present, the storm has a windspeed of 18 meters per second.
To be clear, there is some disagreement over whether or not the storm is actually considered a typhoon at present, with a SCMP article published this morning referring to the storm as a ‘typhoon,’ while an Eye Shenzhen story from noon today calls the approaching weather a ‘tropical low pressure system’ that may become a typhoon.
To find out how to track typhoons in real time, click here.
UPDATE (July 31, 2019 at 6.53pm CST): This article has been updated to clarify that the Hong Kong Observatory has increased the typhoon alert to a No. 8 signal. Also, the alerts in Guangzhou and Shenzhen have risen since the original time of publishing, this has also been changed in the above text.
[Cover image via Pixabay]
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