Authorities across eastern China have stepped up their emergency preparations and cancelled hundreds of flights as Typhoon Bavi, the ninth storm of the season, intensified overnight and barrelled towards the coast on Saturday.
In its 10am bulletin on Saturday, the National Meteorological Centre (NMC) kept an orange typhoon warning in place, while upgrading the rainstorm alert to red – the highest level in the four-tier system and the first such warning this year.
The centre of the storm, a severe typhoon with maximum sustained winds of 42 metres per second (Force 14), was located about 460km (285 miles) off the Zhejiang-Fujian border at 9am, moving northwest at 30 km/h towards southern Zhejiang.
The storm is now forecast to make landfall between Sanmen and Cangnan in Zhejiang in the early hours of Sunday, with winds of 33 to 40 metres per second (Force 12 to 13), slightly less than earlier forecast. It will then move to the northwest and gradually weaken.
The red rainstorm warning, effective between 2pm on Saturday and 2pm Sunday, forecasts torrential downpours of up to 800mm (31 inches) in parts of eastern Zhejiang, northeastern Fujian and north-central Taiwan over the same 24-hour period.
Elsewhere, rainfall of 250 to 500mm is expected in eastern and southern Zhejiang and northern Fujian, and 250 to 280mm in parts of Beijing and Hebei.