HONG KONG >> Powerful gales and heavy rain from the deadly Super Typhoon Yagi drenched southern China on Friday, with schools shut for a second day and flights cancelled as Asia’s strongest storm this year headed for landfall along the coast of Hainan province.

Packing maximum sustained winds of 245 km per hour (152 mph) near its centre, Yagi registers as the world’s second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024 so far, after the Category 5 Atlantic hurricane Beryl, and the most severe in the Pacific basin this year.

After more than doubling in strength since killing 16 people in the northern Philippines earlier this week, Yagi’s eye was about 100 kilometres (62 miles) offshore Hainan as of midday, with no loss of wind speed overnight.

Yagi is expected to make landfall along China’s coast between Wenchang in Hainan and Leizhou in Guangdong province from Friday afternoon. It is then predicted to hit Vietnam and Laos over the weekend.

Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority said four airports in the north, including Hanoi’s Noi Bai International, would be closed on Saturday due to the storm.

Winds and rain were accompanied by powerful thunder and lightening across the region overnight and on Friday morning.

“I’m worried about this typhoon. It could destroy months of hard work,” said Qizhao, a banana farmer at the village of Gaozhou in Guangdong, adding that villagers were reinforcing their trees with poles to protect them from the wind.

Transport links across southern China were mostly shuttered on Friday with many flights cancelled in Hainan, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. The world’s longest sea crossing, the main bridge linking Hong Kong with Macau and Zhuhai in Guangdong, was also closed.

Many businesses, including factories, were also shut.

In the financial hub of Hong Kong, the stock exchange was shuttered while schools remained closed on Friday.

The city of over 7 million people lowered its typhoon warning by a notch after midday, with winds expected to weaken gradually as Yagi moves away, allowing businesses to reopen.

Intense rainbands associated with Yagi will still bring heavy squally showers to the territory.

RARE LANDFALL

Yagi is set to be the most severe storm to land in Hainan since 2014, when Typhoon Rammasun slammed into the island province as a Category Five tropical cyclone. Rammasun killed 88 people in Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan and caused economic losses of more than 44 billion yuan ($6.25 billion).

Formed over the warm seas east of the Philippines and a similar path as Rammasun did, Yagi is expected to arrive in China as a Category Four typhoon, ushering in winds strong enough to overturn vehicles, uproot trees and severely damage roads, bridges and buildings.

In Hainan’s capital Haikou, streets were deserted as people stayed indoors, photographs on social media showed.

Its projected landfall in Hainan is rare, as most typhoons landing on the duty-free island are classified as weak. From 1949 to 2023, 106 typhoons landed in Hainan but only nine were classified as super typhoons.

Typhoons are becoming stronger, fuelled by warmer oceans, amid climate change, scientists say. Last week, Typhoon Shanshan slammed into southwestern Japan, the strongest storm to hit the country in decades.

Yagi, which strengthened into a super typhoon on Wednesday night, is the Japanese word for goat and for the constellation of Capricornus, a mythical creature that is half goat, half fish.