To defend against approaching Typhoon Wipha, this year’s 6th typhoon, the Flood, Drought, and Wind Disaster Prevention Headquarters of Guangdong Province activated a Level IV wind emergency response at 6 pm on the 18th.
By 5 a.m. on the 19th, Typhoon Wipha had strengthened from a tropical storm to a severe tropical storm, with its center located approximately 880 kilometers southeast of Yangjiang City, Guangdong, over the sea.
According to monitoring by the Guangdong Provincial Meteorological Observatory, Typhoon Wipha is moving northwestward at a speed of 20 to 25 kilometers per hour, with gradually increasing intensity. It is expected to approach the coastal areas of central and western Guangdong on the 19th and make a direct assault on Guangdong, most likely making landfall as a typhoon (category 12 to 13) between western Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta coastal regions on the 20th.
The Guangdong Meteorological Observatory forecasts that from the night of the 19th to the 21st, under the influence of the typhoon’s main cloud system, cities and counties in southern and central Guangdong will experience heavy to severe rainstorms, with locally extremely heavy rain in the Pearl River Delta and western Guangdong, and heavy rain to locally severe rain in northern Guangdong; on the 22nd, although rainfall will weaken, most cities and counties in Guangdong will still see moderate to heavy rain with localized heavy rain.
At the same time, to cope with Typhoon Wipha, China’s National Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters also decided to activate a Level IV flood and typhoon emergency response for Guangdong and Hainan at 6 p.m. on the 18th, and dispatched a working group to Guangdong to assist and guide flood and typhoon prevention efforts.
Typhoon Wipha formed in the early morning of the 18th over the ocean east of the Philippines and is expected to enter the northern part of the South China Sea from the early morning to the morning of the 19th.