On Sunday, residents of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands rushed to secure their homes and flee to emergency shelters as Super Typhoon Bavi bore down on the US Pacific territories, with the National Weather Service warning of “catastrophic” damage from winds expected to exceed 250 kilometres per hour. The Joint Typhoon Warning Centre said Bavi could intensify to sustained winds of 280 kilometres per hour and gusts of 333 kilometres per hour before making landfall, while other official forecasts put the top sustained winds at 260 kilometres per hour — still equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.

Guam’s civil defence authorities opened five evacuation centres in schools, with a combined capacity of nearly 1,900, primarily for residents in vulnerable housing. By midday Sunday, one centre in the capital, Hagåtña, had already reached its limit and people were being redirected. On the Northern Marianas island of Rota, home to about 1,500 people, the mayor urged residents to “pray for the safety of our people” as forecasts showed the eye could pass directly overhead. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said it had positioned 1.1 million litres of water, 1.2 million meals and dozens of generators in Guam.

The western Pacific is accustomed to powerful storms, but Bavi struck a region still recovering from Super Typhoon Sinlaku in April, which killed 17 people and caused an estimated $1.5 billion in damage across the two territories. Taiwanese forecasters, meanwhile, warned that the storm could veer north-west later in the week, bringing heavy rain and gale-force winds to the island’s east coast by Friday, though the exact track remained uncertain. The World Meteorological Organization confirmed that El Niño conditions had taken hold in the tropical Pacific, typically driving more intense cyclone activity.

Local officials said they had improved early-warning systems and stockpiled supplies after the 2023 Typhoon Mawar left parts of Guam without power for months. By Sunday evening, no casualties had been reported, but the NWS cautioned that the window to evacuate was closing and that outdoor conditions would soon become lethal.