China Raises Alert Level as Typhoon Kajiki Strengthens

China’s National Meteorological Center (NMC) raised its alert level on Sunday as Typhoon Kajiki continued to intensify, threatening to bring powerful winds and torrential rains to the country’s southernmost regions, according to official sources.

The agency issued an orange alert at 10:00 a.m. local time (02:00 GMT) as the storm advanced. At 9:00 a.m., Kajiki was located over the western part of the South China Sea, about 200 kilometers southeast of Sanya in Hainan province.

Maximum sustained winds near the center of the typhoon reached 137 kilometers per hour, the NMC reported. The storm is forecast to continue moving northwest at about 20 kilometers per hour and could strengthen into a “severe typhoon.”

“It may make landfall between the afternoon and evening of August 24 along the coastal stretch between Lingshui and Ledong in Hainan, with winds of 144 to 162 kilometers per hour, equivalent to ‘typhoon’ or ‘severe typhoon,’” the NMC said in a statement.

The agency also noted the possibility that the storm could skirt the southern coast of Hainan before gradually moving toward central and northern Vietnam. In areas close to the storm’s center, gusts could reach levels 15 or 16 on the Chinese wind scale. Heavy to torrential rainfall is forecast for parts of Hainan, southwestern Guangdong and southern Guangxi, with accumulations of up to 400 millimeters.

Authorities in Hainan on Sunday raised the provincial typhoon alert to level I, the highest in China’s four-tier warning system. Local media reported the suspension of classes, work, business operations, public transportation, and maritime travel, as well as the closure of tourist sites.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources also activated a level IV emergency response for flood risk in Guangdong, Hainan and Guangxi, dispatching work teams to the first two provinces to support and oversee prevention measures, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

According to the monitoring platform Zoom.earth, Kajiki was producing winds of 120 kilometers per hour on Sunday and was expected to strengthen further as it neared Hainan’s southern coast later in the day. The storm is projected to make landfall in central Vietnam by midday Monday, with winds of up to 150 kilometers per hour.

Typhoons are recurring weather events in southeastern China and Taiwan during the summer and autumn, when warm Pacific waters fuel cyclones that can cause significant damage and disrupt transportation and economic activity.