Super Typhoon Bavi made landfall Monday over a tiny U.S. territorial island in the western Pacific near Guam, bringing powerful winds and torrential rain to the Northern Mariana Islands as residents were urged to stay indoors.
The storm started passing through the island of Rota Monday morning local time, according to the National Weather Service. The typhoon threatened other parts of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory east of the Philippines, as well as Guam. The area was still recovering from another destructive cyclone earlier this year.
“They are currently already encountering catastrophic wind,” National Weather Service meteorologist Edwin Montvila said earlier in the day of Rota, an island of fewer than 2,000 people northeast of Guam.
An extreme wind warning was in effect for the island. The cyclone is forecast to be a category five super typhoon with winds that could reach 180 miles (290 kilometers) per hour and gusts of 215 miles (346 kilometers) per hour, Montvila said.
In addition to Rota, typhoon warnings were in effect for Guam, Tinian and Saipan, while tropical storm warnings and watches were in place for other islands in the area.
The storm comes months after Super Typhoon Sinlaku, the strongest tropical cyclone this year, battered islands in the region in April, bringing ferocious winds and relentless rains. A cyclone becomes a super typhoon when it has maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 kph) or stronger.
Bavi posed an “imminent danger to life,” Montvila said, with the weather service telling residents across the islands to immediately move to interior rooms where they were sheltering and stay away from windows.
“Entering outside can result in death from flying projectiles. Utility poles and associated power lines will be down,” Montvila said. “All those would pose a risk to life, so we recommend people to not venture out and hunker down.”
Bavi was moving at a relatively fast pace Monday morning, which gave officials hope that it would pass quickly, Montvila said. But because of the size of the storm, the islands could still face tropical storm conditions, including torrential rains, through at least Monday night.
The typhoon “was a bit erratic” overnight into Monday morning, wavering north and south as it headed west toward the islands, Montvila said.
Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero urged people to stay home or at a shelter and to avoid the roads.
“Here we are experiencing another severe force of winds on our island, but as we know, we are always ready and prepared in our planning and our protection of our people,” she said in a video posted on social media Sunday.
The Rev. Francis Hezel, a priest at Santa Barbara Catholic Church in Dededo, Guam, heard winds howling outside his house for hours since waking up before dawn. But he's hopeful the typhoon won't cause widespread structural damage on the island because most residents live in concrete homes.
“I think it's more of a matter of inconvenience than anything else,” he said, noting the risk of power outages that have lasted several days in other recent storms.
Hezel said officials should “tone down” their warnings in anticipation of typhoons hitting the region so that residents aren't overly fearful.
“By this time, people are used to typhoons,” he said. “They know what they have to do to prepare for them.”
