Hong Kong, July 24 : A growing typhoon is sweeping across the Pacific Ocean toward the Philippines. Forecasters are warning that it could strengthen into a super typhoon and progress towards Taiwan, Hong Kong or mainland China later this week, CNN reported.
According to the United States' Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Typhoon Doksuri began as a tropical storm in the Western Pacific on Sunday morning.
By the day’s end, it had been upgraded to a typhoon with maximum winds of 230 kilometres per hour (140 miles per hour), according to Philippines weather agency Pagasa.
The typhoon is now approaching Luzon, the Philippines’ largest and most populous island, where it’s expected to hit the island’s northeastern edge on Tuesday local time, bringing up to ten inches of rainfall.
That could increase to about 18 inches of rainfall by Wednesday as the typhoon intensifies and heads toward the northern part of the South China Sea, spelling potential trouble for Taiwan, Hong Kong, and parts of southern China, according to CNN.
Pagasa has warned that Doksuri, also known as Egay in the Philippines, could become a super typhoon by late Tuesday or early Wednesday,
A super typhoon, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, is the highest and most destructive level on the scale. At that level, storms can cause catastrophic damage to residential areas, depending on wind speeds and the extent of coastal storm surges.
It could then begin weakening late Wednesday as it enters the Taiwan Strait, Pagasa forecast.
But the typhoon’s exact path is still uncertain, with the Hong Kong Observatory saying over the weekend there were several possible routes it could go.
As per CNN, the typhoon could pass over the island of Taiwan; it could swing south, missing Taiwan and hitting the southern coast of China’s Guangdong instead, including Hong Kong; or it could go north, largely sparing both.
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