Typhoon Champi Loops Off Taiwan and Still Injures 527

Typhoon Champi never made landfall in Taiwan, yet a rare overnight loop off Yilan County left 527 people hurt and one man dead. The weakening core was already turning north toward China’s coast on Saturday, October 24, and was not expected to come ashore there either.

Around 1 a.m., the center grazed Nanfang’ao, drew a full circle over the water, and only then headed away. A retired teacher in Yilan, surnamed Lin, said the worst of it came in the dark.

It was most terrifying around midnight. It was a sleepless night. I haven’t seen anything like this in many years.

Lin, retired teacher, Yilan

A Rare Loop off the Yilan Coast

Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration treated the pass as a graze, not a landfall. Wu Wan-hua, deputy director of the CWA forecast center, said the storm reached waters off the northeast on Friday night, then began to spin in place. The center slipped past Nanfang’ao between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Saturday, sat about 110 kilometers east-southeast of Yilan by 6 a.m., and only then resumed a northward track.

Suao logged a peak gust of 41 meters per second as the core went by. The CWA also reported gusts of about 227 kph in some coastal areas, with roof tiles ripped off and power lines down. Lanyu, farther south, reached force 15 on the Beaufort scale.

The eye stayed offshore. The wind field did not. A CWA briefing to the Executive Yuan had already timed a storm circle covering Taiwan land until 6 p.m. Saturday, after it first crossed the coast at 4 a.m. Friday, a stretch of 38 hours. Force-10 winds had already touched Yilan at 5 p.m. Friday, hours before the midnight loop.

THE OVERNIGHT GRAZE

1. Friday, 5 p.m.: Force-10 winds touch Yilan land while the center is still offshore.
2. Friday night: Steering flow fades and the center slows off the northeast coast, then starts to loop.
3. Saturday, 1 to 2 a.m.: The center grazes Nanfang’ao; Suao records 41 meters per second.
4. Saturday, 6 a.m.: The center sits about 110 kilometers east-southeast of Yilan after completing the turn.
5. Saturday, 6 p.m.: The land warning is due to lift as the storm circle leaves Taiwan.

Weather trackers watching the radar saw the same geometry from the other side of the strait: a brush past Yonaguni, a lurch into Taiwan’s mountains, then a return loop over the same islet in roughly 12 hours. The CWA still did not log a Taiwan landfall.

Why Taiwan’s Mountains Bent the Track

CWA forecaster Liu Pei-teng had said landfall could not be ruled out if the storm “stalls, loops, or wobbles from side to side” on approach. That is what the mountains delivered, without ever taking the eye inland.

Liu said the west side of the circulation was torn up as it swept the Central Mountain Range, while the east side, still over water, kept a tighter spiral. On satellite the storm looked cut in half. Once the center drifted closer during the loop, the core itself began to fall apart, and by Saturday morning the eye was hard to find.

Wu Sheng-yu, a senior adviser at Weather Risk, tied the circle to a lee-side low that often forms when a strong typhoon approaches Yilan. Air dropping down the east-coast slopes heated Taitung enough that a Chenggong station hit 39.3C before dawn, a foehn burst in the middle of a typhoon night. Weak steering from the Pacific high left Champi with little to resist that pull, so the track bent west, kissed the shore, and spun back east.

Dry air and strong wind shear finished the job after the mountains had already opened the core. The CWA still expected Champi to weaken into a tropical storm Saturday afternoon, with the sea warning following at night.

527 Injuries Came From a Storm That Missed

The Central Emergency Operations Center, with Interior Minister Liu Shih-fang in the chair, put the toll at one death and 527 injuries as of 7:30 a.m. Saturday. Most of the hurt were scrapes and bruises. Twenty-one were foreign nationals from Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The single death was already two days old. A man surnamed Lin was swept off the beach below Beauty Cave in Liuqiu Township, Pingtung, on Thursday, October 22. Rescuers found him without vital signs that afternoon, and he was pronounced dead around 5 p.m. The island sits off the southwest coast, far from the Yilan loop that defined Saturday’s winds.

INJURIES BY CITY

Those three led the count. Taipei, Tainan and Yilan were also among the places where the injured clustered. Friday’s earlier sample, when the tally was still 94, had already shown the pattern: 30 people hurt in motorcycle or traffic wrecks, 16 in falls, and 10 by falling objects such as signs and trees.

General disaster calls reached 6,550 by 7:30 a.m., with 3,687 closed and 2,863 still open, the heaviest unfinished piles in Taipei, Taichung and Yunlin. Crews were cutting trees, picking up downed lines and water pipes, and tying down tin roofs. Slope alerts stayed up, including two red debris-flow streams in Hsinchu County and 148 yellow streams in Yilan, New Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu.

Authorities moved 3,286 people, with Hsinchu County alone accounting for 1,344. Forty-three shelters in seven cities and counties held 499 people.

Power Crews Are Still Climbing Poles in the Rain

Taipower said that as of 9 a.m. Saturday, 288,382 households had lost electricity at some point. Crews had restored 231,802, about 80 percent, leaving 56,580 still dark, with a target of 5 p.m. for the rest. The outages ran from Yilan through New Taipei, Taoyuan and down the west coast to Kaohsiung, a map that followed the wind field, not the eye.

HOUSEHOLDS THAT LOST POWER

Yilan still had the largest share unrestored, which matches where the loop held the core. The National Communications Commission counted 304 damaged cell sites, 275 of them still down, and issued mobile-service alerts for parts of New Taipei, Yilan and Taoyuan.

Rain was heaviest on the mountains the storm never crossed. The CWA logged 652 millimeters on Taipingshan by Saturday morning, with Datong Township in Yilan close behind at 650 millimeters and several stations in Hsinchu and Taichung over 400 millimeters.

The Civil Aeronautics Administration had already cancelled 977 flights by 10 a.m. Friday, 262 of them domestic and 715 international or cross-strait. Taoyuan Airport alone dropped 596 services in a nine-hour window. By Saturday the transport ministry still had 242 cancellations on the board. Thirteen cities and counties, including Taipei and Yilan, shut offices and schools for a second day; the south, Hualien, Taitung, Penghu and Kinmen went back to work. TSMC said Friday that its plants were running as normal.

From a 185 mph Peak Over Open Water

Four days earlier this was a different storm. On October 20, Champi reached 185 mph (298 km/h) on the one-minute scale used by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, tying Super Typhoon Sinlaku for the strongest winds on Earth in 2026. A super typhoon, on that scale, starts at 150 mph.

Japan’s meteorological agency, averaging over 10 minutes, put the same peak near 900 hPa and 215 km/h sustained winds, with gusts to 305 km/h, and classed the system as large and violent. Champi had already slid within about 10 to 16 kilometers of Guam’s southern tip the previous weekend, then exploded over the Philippine Sea.

CHAMPI AT FULL STRENGTH

• Peak winds: 185 mph one-minute, tied with Sinlaku for 2026’s strongest.
• Peak pressure: 900 hPa on the Japan Meteorological Agency scale, with 215 km/h 10-minute winds.
• Peak gusts: 305 km/h on that same JMA reading.
• Name: Champi is the Laotian name for the champaca flower on the Typhoon Committee list; Taiwan numbered it 29 and Japan numbered it 30.

By the time the loop began, the CWA had it as a moderate typhoon with 126 kph near the center. The island’s usual typhoon playbook, closures, sandbags, amphibious vehicles in Yilan, kept the death toll at one. It did not keep falling trees, scooters and signs from filling the injury log while the eye stayed at sea.

Zhejiang Emptied Harbors Before the Turn to Kyushu

China’s emergency management ministry sent a team to Zhejiang and said 400 rescue workers and 600 pieces of equipment were ready, with more than 41,000 firefighters on duty. The National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center issued an orange wave alert and a blue storm-surge alert, warning of 4 to 5.5 meter seas off Zhejiang and northern Fujian and a 60 to 120 centimeter surge from Shanghai to Fujian.

ALONG THE NEXT STRETCH OF COAST

• Taizhou boats: More than 3,800 fishing boats were back in harbor, and offshore fish-farm crews were brought ashore.
• Island visitors: 2,084 people were moved off islands along that coast.
• Work and ferries: Authorities halted 25 offshore construction jobs and stopped 18 passenger ferry routes.
• Japan’s fix: At 9 a.m. Saturday the Japan Meteorological Agency had Champi about 50 kilometers north-northeast of Yonaguni, at 980 hPa, with 108 kph winds and 162 kph gusts, moving east at 15 kph.

Shanghai, Zhejiang and Fujian had already gone to a Level IV flood and typhoon response. A brush of the Zhejiang coast on Sunday was still possible; a China landfall was not the working forecast. The same track then bends toward Kyushu on Monday and is expected to become an extratropical cyclone by Tuesday.

By Saturday afternoon the storm circle was due to leave Taiwan’s land, with 56,580 homes still waiting on Taipower and Champi’s next problem already waiting off Zhejiang and Kyushu.