Super Typhoon Mangkhut slams Philippines with Category 5 power
The storm could affect as many as 48.6 million people in the region.
(Bloomberg) – Super Typhoon Mangkhut slammed into the Philippines early Saturday morning, after thousands of people moved to safer ground ahead of landfall by the strongest storm in the world this year.
The Category 5 storm had top winds of 167 miles (269 kilometers) per hour, with gusts as high as 201 miles per hour, when it was about 245 miles northeast of Manila, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said in its latest report. Forecasters expect Mangkhut to head toward the Hong Kong area and South China.
Northernmost part of Philippines bearing brunt of typhoon
Mangkhut, named after a Thai fruit, went ashore at about 1:40 a.m. in Cagayan province, the Philippine weather bureau, Pagasa, said on its Twitter account. The entire main Luzon island where the capital region is has been placed under storm alert, with provinces in the northernmost part of the country bearing the brunt of the typhoon.
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The storm could affect as many as 48.6 million people in the region, according to the United Nation’s Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System. About 20 cyclones pass through disaster-prone Philippines each year. Super Typhoon Haiyan, which packed winds of as high as 315 kilometers per hour, killed more than 6,300 people there in 2013.
Mangkhut’s landfall came hours after Hurricane Florence in the Atlantic hit the North Carolina coast in the U.S. The hurricane had 140 mile-per-hour winds, the equivalent of a Category 4 storm on the U.S. Saffir-Simpson scale, at its peak. Florence’s top wind fell to 90 miles per hour when it came ashore, making it a Category 1 system.