YILAN, Taiwan: As Super Typhoon Kong-rey approached, five-meter waves battered Taiwan’s coastlines on Wednesday, October 30. Forecasters predict that the storm will be among the strongest to hit the island in years.
The US Joint Typhoon Warning Centre said that Kong-rey’s winds were maintaining maximum speeds of over 230 km/h as it got closer to Taiwan, which was a little slower than an earlier assessment.
Currently, Kong-rey is stronger than the catastrophic Typhoon Gaemi, which made landfall in July and was the strongest typhoon to hit Taiwan in eight years. It will be the largest typhoon in eight years if (Kong-rey) maintains the current wind speed,” Chang Chun-yao of the Central Weather Administration, the state weather forecaster, told AFP.
In Taitung County, where the typhoon is expected to strike directly, work and classes were cancelled on the two main islands, and scores of domestic flights and ferry services were cancelled on Wednesday. Taipei residents planning to hunker down during the storm stocked up on fresh vegetables, while fishers wearing slickers against the rain tethered their boats in the harbour in Yilan county, southeast of the capital.
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