Super Typhoon Meranti slammed into Taiwan Tuesday as it dumped more than 20 inches of rain on the island while pummeling it with wind gust of more than 100 miles per hour.
Heavy rain and powerful gusts are expected to continue lashing Taiwan through early Thursday as the storm makes it way to China, possibly triggering flooding and mudslides, Weather.com reported.
Meranti's sustained winds peaked at 190 mph Tuesday afternoon as it moved closer to land, making it the second-strongest tropical cyclone in the northwest Pacific Ocean since 1970, Weather.com noted. The storm is the strongest on the globe this year.
The eye was located 80 miles southeast of Xiamen, China, as of Wednesday morning, Eastern time, noted Weather.com.
The cyclone cut power to more than 500,000 homes as it roared through southern Taiwan on Wednesday, Focus Taiwan News Channel reported. By 3 p.m. Wednesday, Taiwan time, the storm gusts reached 141 mph as it passed 37 miles west-northwest of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan.
The news channel stated that wind totals made the cyclone the strongest storm to hit Taiwan in 21 years. About 1,000 people living in southern Taiwan mountain areas were evacuated while the Kaohsiung city government issued flood warnings for 16 rivers in Taoyuan District, Focus Taiwan noted.
The storm eye was expected to make landfall in China, near Xiamen, about 2 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, or 2 a.m. local time Thursday, CNN reported.
"The typhoon will bring gales and heavy rains when it makes landfall," meteorologist Li Mei told China's state-run news service Xinhua, according to CNN.
Emergency response measures were triggered in six southeastern provinces as well as Shanghai in anticipation of Meranti.
"It only took nine hours for Meranti to grow into a super typhoon from a typhoon," Guangdong meteorologist Zhang Dong told Xinhua, according to CNN. "Packing winds between 202 to 220 kilometers per hour (126 to 137 mph), it is interacting with another storm, Malakas, 1,000 kilometers away, and the route could be hard to predict."
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