China braces for Typhoon Doksuri's landfall
China on Thursday braced for the imminent landfall of Typhoon Doksuri, shutting schools and businesses in some coastal cities, while the national observatory renewed its most severe weather alert after overnight heavy rainfall in the southwest. The approaching typhoon is expected to make landfall on the southeast coast in the early hours of Friday, state radio reported, citing Fujian provincial weather authorities. The national observatory has classified Doksuri as a "strong" typhoon, with maximum winds of 180 kilometres per hour, as it hurtled northwest through the Taiwan Strait towards Fujian province as of 12:00pm. At one point Doksuri was a super typhoon, but lost some of its strength after it lashed the coastline of the northern Philippines on Wednesday, bursting banks of rivers and leaving thousands without electricity. Doksuri killed five people in the Philippines, according to the country's disaster agency. Three coastal cities in Fujian province shut schools, businesses and factories on Thursday, state media reported, while flood control authorities in one of them, Xiamen, warned of a "serious impact". However, the China Meterological Administration forecast that it would be weaker than 2016's Typhoon Meranti, the strongest to hit China's eastern coast since 1949 and which killed at least 11 people. Fifteen provinces and city-level administrative units across China have been affected by "severe" weather, including thunderstorms, heavy rainfall, gales and hail ahead of Doksuri's landfall, Xinhua news agency reported. Beijing launched emergency flood control operations in the southwest on Wednesday night after torrential rains in the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan as well as the nearby metropolis of Chongqing. Heavy flooding in the city of Luzhou, Sichuan province, swept cars onto tree trunks, according to videos circulating on Chinese social media. Passenger ships and fishing boats have also been grounded in parts of coastal Zhejiang province immediately north of Fujian. (Reuters)