Tropical Storm Champi nears China after battering Taiwan, Japan

A powerful storm swept towards China on Saturday after battering Taiwan and Japan’s southernmost islands, knocking out power to thousands of households and forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights. Typhoon Champi was downgraded to a tropical storm as its wind speed dropped to 102 kilometres (63 miles) per hour, according to the latest update from the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre. Taiwanese authorities evacuated more than 5,000 people from their homes ahead of the storm, which toppled trees, brought down power lines and triggered brief flooding. One person was killed and more than 600 injured since Thursday, when the government began issuing warnings about the typhoon. Power has been restored to more than 90 per cent of over 340,000 affected households, after the storm unleashed fierce winds and heavy rain over swathes of Taiwan.

Most shops across northern and central Taiwan were closed for a second day, as the typhoon moved away from the island’s northeast and headed north towards China. “Although the typhoon is gradually departing, we would like to remind the public that coastal areas will still experience swells and strong wind gusts,” the Central Weather Administration’s Wuu Woan-hwa said at a briefing. Champi is the latest in a busy Pacific storm season turbocharged by the El Nino weather phenomenon that has caused unprecedented warming in the equatorial Pacific. The storm was briefly a super typhoon as it crossed the ocean in recent days, with reported maximum sustained wind speeds of nearly 300kph. Its intensity weakened overnight as it made a loop off Taiwan’s northeastern county of Yilan, where it has dumped at least 65 cm (26 inches) of rain since Thursday, the forecaster said. Martha Wang said she was afraid of being “blown away” by the wind as she…