Typhoon Champi Stops Taiwan Before the Eye Arrives

Typhoon Champi had already cancelled 977 flights and shut Taiwan’s stock exchange on Friday, while forecasts still kept the eye offshore. Schools and offices stopped in nearly every county. The year’s strongest storm was arriving as a near miss, and the halt was already the hit.

The center was still over water east of the island. Rain, a leftover landslide dam in Hualien, and a grounded cargo bank at Taoyuan were not waiting on landfall.

A Near Miss That Stopped Taiwan Anyway

Champi peaked on Tuesday at 185 mph (298 km/h), a super typhoon on the open Philippine Sea. By Friday morning Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration put sustained winds near the center at 155 km/h (96 mph), with gusts to 191 km/h, and a gale radius of 320 km that already covered most of the island.

CWA deputy director Wu Wan-hua said the center was forecast to come within about 80 km of Taiwan from late Friday night into Saturday morning. Forecaster Lin Ping-yu had said Thursday the plotted track did not show landfall, and that the agency still could not rule it out if the storm stalled or wobbled.

The current forecast track does not show landfall, but it is very close to Taiwan’s land.

Lin Ping-yu, CWA forecaster, Thursday briefing

A landfall, in the agency’s own terms, is the eye moving from sea onto land. Plenty of West Pacific storms have wrecked coasts without that. Champi’s rainbands were already on the island Friday, and the Executive Yuan’s briefing put the storm circle on Taiwan land from 4 a.m. Friday until 6 p.m. Saturday.

THE STORM CLOCK OVER TAIWAN

1. October 21, 11:30 p.m.: Sea typhoon warning issued.
2. October 22, 11:30 a.m.: Land warning issued.
3. October 22, 9 p.m.: Storm circle reaches Taiwan’s nearshore waters.
4. October 23, 4 a.m.: Storm circle reaches Taiwan’s land.
5. October 24, 6 p.m.: Storm circle forecast to leave the land.
6. October 25, midnight: Storm circle forecast to leave nearshore waters.

CWA administrator Lu Kuo-chen had told a briefing the system would wrap the island after landfall and ease on October 24 and 25. The later track still aimed at a pass off the northeast, then a turn toward Japan.

977 Flights, 75 of Them Cargo

Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration counted 977 cancellations from Thursday through 10 a.m. Friday: 262 domestic and 715 international and cross-strait. That is the whole domestic book for Friday, plus most of the long-haul bank.

Taoyuan International Airport Corp. said 596 flights there were cancelled between midnight and 9 a.m. Friday, including 521 passenger flights and 75 cargo flights. EVA Air cancelled its later Friday long-haul services to Europe and the United States. Starlux said it would fly only those long-haul routes and drop the rest of Asia.

Seventy-five freighters in one morning is the part passenger boards do not show. Electronics and chip shipments that leave Taiwan in belly holds and dedicated cargo aircraft will stack into next week, even if the passenger terminals reopen on Saturday.

THE TALLY BY FRIDAY MORNING

The Maritime and Port Bureau said all sailings stopped on nine routes, including Keelung-Matsu, Kaohsiung-Magong, and the Green Island and Lanyu runs. Kinmen-Wutong ran a partial book. Railway services and some highways were closed. National parks shut. Work and classes stopped in nearly all of Taiwan’s 22 counties and cities; only Kinmen, west of the main island, kept a normal Friday.

The Taiwan Stock Exchange closed with Taipei. Exchange rules say the market stays shut for the day when Taipei City offices close the evening or morning before a session. The exchange is also due to stay shut Monday for a public holiday, so the typhoon Friday opens a long trading gap against Seoul and Tokyo.

The Central Emergency Operations Center said one person had died and 94 were injured as of 6:30 a.m. Friday, with 1,286 people moved out of harm’s way. The death was on Thursday: a person swept away by waves on Liuqiu, a coral island southwest of the main island. Many of the injuries were from traffic accidents and falls, the fire department said.

The Hualien Dam From June Is Still There

The rain problem is not only the wind field. Northern and northeastern mountains were told to expect up to 900 mm (90 cm) from Thursday through Saturday. By 9 a.m. Friday the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction, citing CWA gauges, had 307 millimeters at Taipingshan in Yilan and 207 mm at a Taipei tea site. Taipei City had already seen more than 200 mm in 24 hours. Yellow alerts covered 44 potential debris-flow streams in Yilan.

Downstream of all that sits a barrier lake on Wanli Creek in Hualien, formed by a landslide in June. Premier Cho Jung-tai said Thursday morning the dam held five million metric tons of water, and that it could breach in the storm. National Fire Agency chief secretary Cheng Chih-chiang asked local officials to move people living below it. The center said Friday it was still watching rainfall and water levels there, and would send cell-broadcast alerts if needed.

This is not a dam Champi built. It is a June slope failure that earlier typhoons already tested, now taking another mountain soaking. Officials have been telling people to stay off beaches and out of creeks even after the storm leaves, because a breach can lag the rain.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The lake: Premier Cho put the load at five million metric tons of water on Thursday morning.
• The order: Downstream communities were told to move, and the fire agency kept the site on the Friday watch list.
• The rain: Yilan mountains are in the 900 mm forecast, and 44 debris-flow streams there were already on yellow alert.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Landfall: CWA still had the eye staying offshore, and still would not rule out a stall onto land.
• A breach: No overflow or failure had been reported by Friday morning; the risk runs past the moment the winds ease.

NCDR also flagged a chance of foehn winds in Hualien and Taitung on Friday and Saturday, a dry downslope on the east while the northeast drowns. The same storm can bake one county and flood the next.

Ishigaki Is Already in the Wind

While Taipei argued about an eye 80 km out, the Sakishima Islands were already in it. ANA cancelled all Friday flights at Miyako and Ishigaki. Japan Airlines cut Taipei Songshan and Taiwan Taoyuan services. More than 160 flights were cancelled across four Japanese airlines on Friday, after earlier cuts that were already hitting island routes.

Okinawa Electric Power reported 3,630 households without power and said crews were restoring supply by remote operation because outdoor work was unsafe. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told people to use extreme caution against storm-force winds, high waves, landslides and storm surges through Saturday, and to watch low ground and rising rivers in Okinawa and Amami.

Typhoon chaser James Reynolds, reporting from Ishigaki on Friday, said winds in downtown were “close to sustained typhoon force,” with 62 knots on the 10-minute average and a peak gust of 92 knots (105 mph). Stores there were shut. Sandbags had gone down on the beach a day earlier. The argument about whether Champi “hits” Taiwan is a map argument. Ishigaki is already taking the wind.

China’s meteorological authority issued a blue alert, the lowest of four tiers, for a pass off the eastern coast, with 50-80 mm of rain including Shanghai. Zhejiang, expected to see the worst of it on the mainland, went to orange for huge coastal waves. A blue warning is not a shutdown. It is still a Saturday problem for ports from the Yangtze south.

In the Philippines, where the storm is Rosal, PAGASA still had Signal No. 2 up on Friday over Batanes and parts of the Babuyan Islands, with the center packing 150 kph and moving north-northwest. It forecast a drop to a severe tropical storm and an exit from the Philippine Area of Responsibility on Saturday. Batanes had no immediate casualty reports. Many houses there are thick limestone, built for this.

Japan Has Already Hit Typhoon No. 30

Champi is Japan’s 30th typhoon of 2026, the first time the country has reached that count since 2013. The Japan Meteorological Agency’s Friday afternoon typhoon analysis still had a large typhoon at 23.6N, 123.4E, moving north-northwest at 20 km/h, central pressure 955 hPa, maximum winds 40 m/s. JMA then takes it north, down to a severe tropical storm by midday Saturday, and to an extratropical low east of Honshu by Monday morning.

Japan averages about 25 named typhoons a year. Thirty is 20% above that line. Weather records kept since 1951 show 30 storms in a year only 16 times. 2026 is also on course as only the third year, after 1965 and 2015, with at least one typhoon in every month from January through October.

HOW RARE A 30TH STORM IS

• The count: Champi is Japan’s 30th named typhoon of 2026, logged as T2630.
• The last time: The previous year to reach 30 was 2013.
• The average: About 25 named typhoons a year, so 2026 is already 20% above the mean.
• The calendar: A typhoon in every month from January through October has happened only in 1965, 2015, and 2026 in records since 1951.

JMA warned that linear rainbands could form over the remote islands Friday and Saturday, the kind of setup that parks heavy rain on one island for hours. Okinawa was told to expect gusts up to 198 km/h on Friday and 180 km/h on Saturday, up to 250 mm of rain in 24 hours through 6 a.m. Saturday, and waves as high as 12 meters.

This El Niño Has Broken the Record Books

This is the season that count comes from. The UK Met Office said in September that the developing Pacific El Niño had already become the strongest event in the observational record, with weeks still to go before the usual winter peak. Professor Adam Scaife, head of long-range prediction, said the agency had been flagging an event beyond living memory, and that it had already beaten previous records.

During large El Niño events significantly more heat is released from the ocean to the atmosphere leading to an increase in global average temperature, particularly in the calendar year following the winter peak of the El Niño. Hence, 2027 is very likely to replace 2024 as the warmest year on record and be yet another year to temporarily exceed +1.5 C above the pre-industrial period.

Dr Nick Dunstone, Met Office Science Fellow, Met Office blog

El Niño tends to cut Atlantic hurricanes and feed West Pacific typhoons. The Met Office noted a quiet Atlantic and a busy eastern Pacific. Indonesia has been in its worst wildfire season in more than a decade. India’s monsoon has run short. Champi is one storm in that pattern, not a freak isolated from it. Scientists still expect more named storms before the year ends. In the Philippines, Rosal sits early in an A-to-Z list that is rarely exhausted in a single year.

The Rain Does Not Leave With the Eye

Keelung was told to expect torrential or extremely torrential rain. Eastern and southeastern coasts, plus Lanyu, had already seen waves above 8 meters by Friday morning, with 6-meter seas likely along the east, the north coast, and Hengchun. Lanyu logged Beaufort 15 gusts. CWA warned of level 12 gusts, the top of the Beaufort scale, in the north.

People should be aware that the strong winds and extremely heavy rain will continue into the first half of tomorrow (Saturday).

Lu Kuo-chen, CWA administrator

Northerly winds are forecast to keep dumping on northern and central Taiwan even after the center peels away Saturday afternoon. Cho told people to stay out of mountains, creeks, and beaches. Cheng said that advice holds after Champi leaves, because the Wanli lake can still go.

JMA’s working forecast has the system as an extratropical low near 34.5N, 139.7E by 9 a.m. Monday, racing east-northeast at 45 km/h with a central pressure of 998 hPa. That is a dying storm off Honshu. Between Friday and that map sit a closed Taiwan market, a 75-flight cargo hole at Taoyuan, Ishigaki in typhoon-force gusts, and a June dam taking another night of mountain rain.