15 people dead in the Philippines. Buried by mud, not water. Just as the rest of East Asia looks up at the sky and worries.
Typhoon Bavi is big. I mean really big. It stretches 1000km across the Pacific at its widest point. Roughly the width of France. It is heading straight for Taiwan.
The path forward is terrifyingly predictable. Rain for the north and east of the island. Rain for those remote Japanese dots in the sea. And then, landfall in southeastern China this Saturday.
Flight cancellations are stacking up. Schools closed. You’ve probably seen the photos from supermarkets — bare shelves. People panic buy rice. It always looks like that.
In Mindanao though, it isn’t about shopping lists. Families vanished overnight when the hillsides gave way. Rescuers are still digging.
“Moderate to heavy rains… will continue throughout the weekend.”
Officials say the storm isn’t letting up there yet.
But wait until Bavi arrives elsewhere. Taiwan expects a meter of rain. That is 39 inches. To handle the potential disaster, the island has placed 29,00 soldiers on standby. That’s a massive deployment.
Bavi isn’t just wet. It is historically large by diameter. The largest to hit Taiwan since 1987.
On the ground, the calm feels like a trap. Fishermen know this game. They tie their boats down. Tighter. Harder.
“Don’t be fooled by the nice weather,” Chen Ming-hui, 60, told reporters. He sounded tired. Scared, even. “It could be the most terrifying.”
Chen isn’t alone in his dread. Farmers raced to save what crops they could before Friday’s weather window closed. Thousands of sandbags now sit like dry concrete walls outside flood-prone shops.
Across the water, China sees the threat moving northward after slamming Fujian.
The director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs has a warning for the provinces less used to tropical storms. Jiangsu. Anhui.
They need to prepare.
The outer rainbands — the remnants of the monster — could drift toward the Bohai Sea. Those northern areas don’t have the same experience. The same infrastructure. They might be unprepared.
Could Bavi landfall twice in China? The forecast models are still twitching on that one. No one knows for sure. The sky remains calm, but everyone is waiting for the wind to change.
