A Japanese meteorologist is warning that southern China and Vietnam should brace for very strong Typhoon Yagi, which can be categorized as a super typhoon.
The storm has rapidly developed over the South China Sea. The Japan Meteorological Agency says that as of 9 a.m. Friday, Japan time, its central atmospheric pressure was 915 hectopascals.
The maximum sustained wind speed near its center was almost 200 kilometers per hour, with peak gusts of 270 kilometers per hour.
The US Joint Typhoon Warning Center at one time called Yagi a super typhoon — the most powerful in its scale.
The typhoon has since weakened a little, but it is still very powerful and heading to the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea.
Tsuboki Kazuhisa, a professor at Japan’s Nagoya and Yokohama National universities, analyzed the courses of super typhoons between 1980 and 2023.
He found they passed over the waters between east of the Philippines and south of Japan’s Nansei Islands once or twice a year.
He says it is extremely rare that a typhoon as powerful as Yagi travels over the South China Sea.
He cites warmer-than-usual surface temperatures of the sea, which are currently at around 30 degrees Celsius, as a possible reason.
Tsuboki says that although Yagi has become a little less powerful, it still could wreak havoc on southern China’s Hainan Island and Vietnam.
He warns that Japan may not be immune to super typhoons.