Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated in the central Philippines, where a fierce storm is lashing coastal areas with heavy wind and rain.
Typhoon Melor unexpectedly strengthened Tuesday morning after losing power Monday after making landfall, according to the latest update from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
The storm returned to Category 4 status with winds at a sustained 230 kph, the U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.
The storm has become even stronger than it was at initial landfall and just 10 kph from being a super typhoon, the JTWC said.
CNN Weather’s Taylor Ward said the storm made landfall on the island of Mindoro on Tuesday morning.
The JTWC update suggests Typhoon Melor will maintain typhoon status for about 48 hours as it moves west over the South China Sea.
On Monday, the storm’s sustained winds had dropped from 215 kph to 165 kph (135 mph to 100 mph) — or from the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane to a Category 2, according to the JTWC.
But the storm was not expected to make landfall over densely populated areas.
The national disaster management agency said roughly 725,000 people had been pre-emptively evacuated, the vast majority of them in southern Luzon.
Forty domestic flights were canceled, nearly 8,000 sea travelers were stranded in ports and many schools were closed, the agency said Monday.
Situated in an area of the Western Pacific that some meteorologists describe as a “bowling alley” for tropical cyclones, the Philippines is frequently buffeted by typhoons.
The deadliest to hit the country in recent years was Super Typhoon Haiyan — one of the most powerful storms ever to make landfall — which left more than 7,000 people dead or missing in November 2013.
