Typhoon Champi swept past Taiwan's northeastern coast on Saturday, killing one person, injuring more than 500, toppling trees and cutting power to hundreds of thousands of homes, before weakening and turning north toward the Chinese coast, Taiwan's emergency authorities said.
The island's fire department confirmed one death — a man swept away by high waves off Liuqiu Island — and 527 injuries from the torrential rain and violent winds. Taipower, the state electricity utility, said more than 167,000 households lost power at the height of the storm, though most had been reconnected by Saturday.
Champi, which at its peak reached super typhoon status and ranked among the strongest Pacific storms of the year, was still packing gusts of around 126 kph (78 mph) near its centre on Saturday, according to Taiwan's Central Weather Administration (CWA). Earlier, gusts reached 227 kph (141 mph) in exposed coastal areas, tearing off roof tiles and bringing down power cables. The storm's centre made an unusual loop offshore after skirting the coast of Yilan County in the early hours of Saturday, a wobble that prolonged its impact. It was positioned about 150 kilometres east of Taiwan on Saturday and is forecast to move north toward the Chinese coast and eventually into southern Japan.
## An island shut down
Taiwan effectively shut down for the storm's passage. Local governments across large parts of northern and central Taiwan, including the capital Taipei, declared a second consecutive day of office and school closures on Saturday. The transport ministry reported about 242 flight cancellations on Saturday — a sharp improvement on Friday, when nearly 1,000 flights were grounded as the storm approached. Ferry services were also suspended, and more than 2,600 people were evacuated from vulnerable mountainous communities where landslides are a standing risk.
The CWA had warned that the storm's wind radius, around 320 kilometres (199 miles), was large enough to cover most of the island, and forecast close to a metre of rain in the northern mountains over the storm's passage. Coastal towns received mobile phone alerts warning of gusts above 150 kph and waves higher than six metres, and President Lai Ching-te urged the public to prepare early and avoid the mountains and the coast. "A little more preparation means less risk," he wrote earlier in the week.
In Taipei, streets were littered with fallen trees on Saturday as squally showers continued intermittently. One 70-year-old resident compared the storm's fury to something out of a horror film, describing it as "quite scary" while running morning errands.
## Why it matters
Champi — known as Rosal in the Philippines, which it also affected — is the latest in a busy Pacific storm season that meteorologists link to a strong El Niño pattern warming the equatorial Pacific, conditions that can fuel powerful late-season typhoons. Autumn storms are not unusual for Taiwan, but a typhoon of this size arriving in late October underlines how the region's risk window is stretching.
Taiwan's relatively low casualty count, despite the storm's strength, also reflects decades of investment in forecasting, evacuation planning and rapid power restoration — a preparedness model that disaster experts frequently cite for other exposed coastlines in Asia, where millions of people in eastern China were also bracing for heavy rain as Champi moves north.
## What happens next
The storm is expected to keep weakening as it travels toward China's coast and then southern Japan, but forecasters warn that its rain bands can still trigger flooding and landslides in saturated mountain areas even after the winds ease. In Taiwan, attention turns to clearing roads, restoring the remaining power outages and assessing damage to farms and infrastructure, while airlines work through the backlog from two days of cancellations.
*Reporting based on Reuters and Taiwan's Central Weather Administration.*