Inland Taiwan will contend with heavy rainfall and landslides through Saturday as some total accumulations could reach as high as 500-700mm in the interior of the island. After the storm passes by Taiwan it will push on shore in Fujian province as a much weaker Typhoon but still carrying a large amount of rainfall inland. Flood risk will continue to be a issue here through the early part of next week.
Even farther north in Okinawa high wind gust up to 150kph and waves over 10meters high can be expected.
Category 3 Strength wind gust were reported in Ishigaki during the late night hours on Friday as Typhoon SOULIK rolled south of the Japanese islands with approximately 50,000 residents. Going through Saturday the bigger threat will now shift west across Taiwan where huge waves and damaging winds have already been reported at the time of this update. Some winds strong enough to start to damage small structures in Taiwan. In Okinawa max winds were reported at 150kph on Friday. The video above is a quick overnight update with storm footage.
In short though the heaviest rains will remain in northern Taiwan especially in the mountains across the center of the country. Here we can see up to 500mm of rainfall triggering landslides and a serious risk of flash flooding. The good news is that Taiwan is not taking this storm lightly. Most schools and business were closed on Friday and several thousand villages on the east coast were evacuated prior to the storms arrival. In 2009 Taiwan was hit by a monster storm resulting in several hundred deaths, now no one wants a repeat of that.
By Saturday afternoon the storm will move in to Fujian province where heavy rains will trigger low lying flooding and test the infrastructure of this region in China.
