Taiwan braced for Typhoon Jangmi Saturday as the storm approached southern Taiwan from the Pacific Ocean, packing winds as high as 227 kilometres per hour.
After issuing a sea warning for Jangmi Friday night, the Central Weather Bureau issued a land warning Saturday, a day before it predicted the storm would brush the island before making landfall in China.
It warned that Jangmi, which means rose in Korean, would bring strong winds and heavy rain to south-eastern and eastern Taiwan over the weekend.
From Friday night to noon Saturday, Jangmi moved 260 kilometres closer to Taiwan and continued to intensify. The speed of the typhoon, which was moving in a north-westerly direction, remained unchanged at 20 kilometres per hour, but the radius of the storm had expanded from 250 kilometres to 280.
By 11:30 am (0330 GMT) Saturday, the eye of Jangmi was 820 kilometres south-east of Taiwan's southern tip of Erlunpi, the Central Weather Bureau said.
Taiwan is regularly hit by typhoons during the Pacific typhoon season, and this month, Typhoon Sinlaku killed 11 people and left 11 missing there.
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