Super Typhoon Bavi, a sprawling storm with a diameter roughly equal to the width of France, was churning towards Taiwan and eastern China on Thursday, prompting authorities to place nearly 29,000 soldiers on standby, cancel dozens of flights, and postpone a nationwide university entrance exam. Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration issued a sea warning and said a land warning would follow early Friday, as forecasters predicted the storm would skirt the island’s northern coast before making landfall in China’s Fujian province on Saturday evening. In Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, residents were told to remain on high alert for violent winds, landslides and storm surges.

The approaching typhoon compounds an already severe weather crisis across China. Typhoon Maysak, which struck earlier this week, killed at least 39 people in the southwestern region of Guangxi, local officials told a news conference, with nine others still missing. In central Hubei province, thunderstorms and gale-force winds claimed 11 lives and injured more than 330, while a landslide in western Gansu left at least 21 dead. Rescue workers were still combing through wreckage and delivering supplies by drone to inaccessible areas when Bavi began its approach.

There is disagreement among meteorological agencies over the storm’s precise intensity and historical ranking. Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration recorded maximum sustained winds of 184 kilometres per hour, while Chinese and Japanese monitors reported speeds closer to 195 km/h, and some American commercial forecasters said the storm had briefly reached 200 km/h before easing. A Taiwanese forecaster told international news agencies that Bavi would be the largest storm by size to affect the island since 1987, and meteorologists in the United States said it could become the most powerful typhoon to hit the region since Super Typhoon Kong-rey in 2024 if it maintains its intensity. The storm’s outer rainbands were already lashing Taiwan’s east coast, with waves exceeding five metres, and rainfall in northern mountains was forecast to reach one metre over two days.

Scientists in London and the United States linked the storm’s rapid intensification to exceptionally warm ocean waters, with sea surface temperatures across the western Pacific running two to three degrees Celsius above average. The expected emergence of an El Niño pattern this year is likely to further elevate typhoon risks, researchers said. As Bavi advanced, Hong Kong carriers cancelled more than 40 flights to Taiwan, mainland China and Japan, and Japanese airlines grounded over 80 domestic and international services. Taiwan’s leader, Lai Ching-te, released a video instructing citizens how to pack a three-day emergency bag, while ferry services to outlying islands were suspended and landslide-prone highways placed under close monitoring. The storm’s full impact remained uncertain, but authorities across the region warned that the most dangerous conditions would persist through Saturday.