Typhoon Mitag Lashes Eastern China, Heads to South Korea

After lashing parts of Taiwan and Japan’s southernmost Ryukyu Islands on Monday, Typhoon Mitag is passing eastern China today and then takes aim at South Korea and the remainder of Japan later this week, according to weather.com meteorologists, in a posting published on Sept. 30.

The center of Typhoon Mitag passed slightly east of Taiwan, blowing through Japan’s southernmost Ryukyu Islands on Monday, with heavy rain and wind gusts of up to 97 mph reported, said weather.com, citing radar imagery from Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau and statistics from the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Typhoon Mitag is now in the East China Sea and will track near eastern China on Tuesday, possibly heading to Shanghai, added the report.

The storm is currently producing winds equal to a Category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean, said AccuWeather in a report issued on Oct. 1. “Mitag is forecast to weaken into a tropical storm prior to reaching South Korea [on Wednesday afternoon or evening], but will still bring the risk for flooding and locally damaging winds.”

“Heavy rainfall will elevate the risk for flooding across all of South Korea. Damaging winds are possible in central and southern parts of the country with the greatest risk in the southwest,” said the AccuWeather report, which was authored by Eric Leister, senior meteorologist.

Mitag is the 18th named storm of the year in the Western Pacific Ocean, the most active basin for tropical cyclones on Earth, said weather.com, quoting “Digital Typhoon.”

From 1981-2010, added the report, an average of 26 Western Pacific named storms formed each year, 17 of which became typhoons, which is more than double the average of the Atlantic Basin’s named storms (12) and hurricanes (6).

Since these Western Pacific storms can form any time of year, there is no typhoon season, explained weather.com.

Weather.com is a sister company of Weather Underground, both of which are subsidiaries of IBM.

Source: weather.com and AccuWeather