Super Typhoon Noul intensified Sunday as it whirled toward the northeastern Philippines, prompting warnings of flooding and landslides in the mountainous region.
With Noul threatening to batter several provinces with ferocious winds and torrential rain, authorities said they had so far relocated more than 1,200 residents of vulnerable areas to evacuation centers.
The storm, which is referred to as Dodong in the Philippines, strengthened into a super typhoon early Sunday.
As its outer bands lashed the coast of the island of Luzon around noon Sunday, Noul was packing maximum sustained winds of about 260 kph (160 mph) and gusts as strong as 315 kph (195 mph).
The powerful storm is forecast to make landfall Sunday afternoon or early evening local time over the northeastern tip of Luzon, according to PAGASA, the Philippine government agency that monitors the weather.
“The weather is deteriorating quite rapidly. It’s obvious that the typhoon is moving in very quickly,” said storm chaser James Reynolds from the small town of Santa Ana that lies in the super typhoon’s path.
Storm warnings across a wide area
The weather agency issued its highest storm warning signal for the northeastern part of Cagayan province and islands off its coast, as well as lower level warnings for the wider region. It said the super typhoon may bring flash floods and landslides.
In Santa Ana, fishermen were bringing in their boats, and residents were boarding up their windows, Reynolds told CNN.
“Really, it’s just a matter of hunkering down somewhere as safe as possible and riding out the storm as it moves ashore this evening,” he said.
Over roughly two days, Noul could dump as much as half a meter (20 inches) of rain on some areas, almost the same amount that London gets in a year, said meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.
Although the affected region is far more sparsely populated than urban areas farther south, the mountainous terrain is likely to draw a lot of the rain, Javaheri said.
The rough seas caused by the storm prompted many vessels ships to take shelter in ports, leaving more than 5,000 people stranded across the nation, according to the national disaster management agency.
Farmers wanted rain
Noul is been menacing the northeastern Philippines at a time when a volcano, Mount Bulusan, has been spewing ash in southern Luzon.
Farmers in Luzon had been hoping the storm would weaken while still providing much needed rains after a dry spell in the region, according to the charity World Vision.
But the storm has only got stronger and looks set to bring extreme amounts of rain to some areas.
Situated in a vulnerable part of the Pacific, the Philippines experiences an average of 20 typhoons a year, five of them destructive, according to the Asian Disaster Reduction Center.