A Weakened Typhoon Champi Still Shuts Taiwan and Tests a Dam

Typhoon Champi sat 100 km east of Yilan on Friday night with 155 kph winds, a day after it killed a free diver. Schools and offices were shut on Taiwan proper, and the storm’s 320 km gale circle still covered the island.

The center was moving north-northeast at 16 kph. The weather office said it might veer or loop before the heaviest mountain rain on Saturday.

Champi Sits 100 km East of Yilan and Can Still Loop

Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration, in its 8:30 p.m. typhoon warning, put the eye at 24.9 degrees north, 122.7 degrees east. Pressure was 945 hPa. Sustained winds were 43 meters per second, or 155 kph, with gusts to 191 kph.

That is a long way from the 298 kph peak earlier in the week, when Champi was a super typhoon over open water. The working storm on Friday was smaller and slower, and it was still large. Gale-force winds reached 320 km from the center, storm-force winds 120 km, and the circle was covering Taiwan and Matsu.

CWA FRIDAY NIGHT FIX

• Where: 100 km east of Yilan, heading north-northeast at 16 kph.
• How hard: 945 hPa at the center, gusts 191 kph, force-16 at times on Lanyu.
• How wide: 320 km gale radius, enough to cover the main island.
• Next fix: Saturday 8 p.m., about 330 km north-northeast of Yilan, if the track holds.

Forecaster Liu Pei-teng said landfall could not be ruled out if the system stalls, loops, or wobbles from side to side on the approach. The bulletin itself warned of a slight deviation or a spin. Either would keep the rain bands over the northeast into Saturday.

Waves of 8 meters and higher were already hitting the north and northeast coasts. The east coast, the Keelung north shore, and the Hengchun Peninsula were seeing 6-meter seas, with 6-meter breakers due on the Miaoli and Taichung coasts Friday night. At 9:40 a.m., 6-meter waves at Fugang Harbor in Taitung swept a large crane into the sea. At Changbin Harbor, 8-meter water overturned three bamboo rafts and threw seawater onto the roads.

A stretch of Provincial Highway 9 at the 401-kilometer mark near Duoliang Village lost part of its roadbed and was closed. Two students from National Dong Hwa University on a scooter hit a fallen tree near campus Thursday night; both had minor injuries and went home from hospital.

A Free Diver Died Thursday Off Xiaoliuqiu

The only confirmed death was on Thursday, before the eye came anywhere near the main island. A man in his 20s was swept off a beach below Beauty Cave in Liuqiu Township, Pingtung County, the Coast Guard Administration said. Police were called around noon. Rescuers found him without vital signs about 2 p.m. He was pronounced dead about 5 p.m.

The Central Emergency Operations Center counted 94 injured by 6:30 a.m. Friday, 52 more than Thursday night. Fire authorities later put the total at 171 by 3 p.m. Most of the morning cases were ordinary and ugly, not storm-surge drownings.

INJURIES BY 6:30 A.M. FRIDAY

• Traffic: 30 people were hurt in motorcycle crashes or other road wrecks.
• Falls: 16 people fell in the wind and rain.
• Flying debris: 10 were hit by billboards, branches, or other loose objects.
• Foreign nationals: The morning list included two Vietnamese workers and one Indonesian.

Premier Cho Jung-tai told the public to stay off beaches, out of creeks, and away from the mountains, including after the wind eases, because Saturday starts a three-day Retrocession Day weekend. The Coast Guard’s own case on Liuqiu was the reason. People went to look at waves. One of them did not come back.

Hualien’s Wanli Dam Holds 5 Million Tonnes

The death was on a coral island off the southwest. The flood problem the government is actually managing sits in the opposite mountains. National Fire Agency chief secretary Cheng Chih-chiang asked Hualien County to move people living downstream of the Wanli River landslide dam. Cho told a Cabinet meeting the dam was holding 5 million tonnes of water on Thursday morning.

Of 1,286 people evacuated nationwide by 8 a.m. Friday, 576 were in Hualien, and 113 of those lived near the Wanli lake. Another 351 were moved in Yilan, 278 in New Taipei, 79 in Taoyuan, and one each in Nantou and Yunlin. New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih said 1,397 people in landslide zones in Yingge, Xindian, Pingxi, and Shulin were due to be moved as the rain built.

The lake is not a leftover from this storm. It is leftover from this year.

WANLI LAKE FROM JUNE TO FRIDAY

1. June 21, 2026: A slope on the Wanli River fails and blocks the valley, and a barrier lake starts to form.
2. Late June and July: Hualien issues yellow and red alerts through Typhoon Bavi and other rain, and downstream towns in Wanrong and Fenglin are emptied more than once.
3. August 12, 2026: Forestry monitors report stable overflow, clear water, and only minor erosion, while the failed mass is still creeping.
4. October 22, 2026: Cho cites 5 million tonnes behind the dam, and Cheng orders a fresh downstream evacuation ahead of Champi.
5. October 23, 2026: 113 people near the lake are among Hualien’s 576 evacuees by 8 a.m., with cell broadcasts ready if the level jumps.

Landslide specialist Dave Petley, writing on the June 21 valley-blocking failure with Planet Labs images, noted that the slide had been shedding dust for weeks before it ran, and that the debris was still moving in July.

The ongoing movement of the landslide mass is undoubtedly putting pressure on the natural spillway. This may be one of the reasons why it is still intact.

Dave Petley, landslide specialist, The Landslide Blog

The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency had put capacity near 5.1 million cubic meters in July. Cho’s Thursday figure means the lake was already close to that mark before Champi’s mountain rain. Alishan’s forest recreation area and most of its railway closed from 8 a.m. Friday. Hualien’s forest parks had already shut Thursday. Of 1,577 people who had gone into restricted mountain areas and national parks, six were in shelters by Friday morning and the rest were down.

977 Flights Halted and the Stock Market Went Dark

Work and classes stopped in 21 of Taiwan’s 22 counties and cities. Only Kinmen, on the far side of the strait, kept a normal day. The $5 trillion stock market stayed dark. Trading is next due on October 27, after the typhoon Friday and the Monday holiday. TSMC said its plants were running with no major hit, and it did cancel a company sports day set for Saturday in Hsinchu.

High-speed rail on the west coast kept running. Almost everything that flies or floats did not.

WHAT STOPPED BY FRIDAY MIDDAY

EVA Air cancelled all of its later long-haul flights to Europe and the United States. Starlux said it would fly only those long-haul routes. Nine ferry lines were fully suspended, including Keelung-Matsu, Kaohsiung-Magong, Donggang-Xiaoliuqiu, and the Taitung runs to Green Island and Lanyu.

The air problem was not only on paper. An ANA 787 inbound to Taipei Songshan from Haneda made two missed approaches in the crosswind and turned back to Tokyo. Japan Airlines closed Miyako, Tarama, Ishigaki, and Yonaguni for the whole of Friday. ANA cancelled every Miyako and Ishigaki flight that day.

Okinawa’s Sakishima Islands Take the Next Blow

Japan is calling the same storm Typhoon No. 30, the 30th named system of its year. The Japan Meteorological Agency’s Friday Typhoon No. 30 analysis at 10 a.m. Japan time put a large typhoon at 22.8 degrees north, 123.8 degrees east, pressure 955 hPa, 40 meters per second near the center, gusts 60 meters per second. The strong-wind field stretched 850 km to the north.

Okinawa prefecture said a woman in her 70s broke a leg in the wind on Miyako Island. Ishigaki’s harbor was already in atrocious shape by Friday afternoon, with boats slammed against the quay and spray over the decks, while Taiwan’s worst rain was still hours away. JMA’s short-term note called for 12-meter waves around Okinawa and 250 mm of rain in 24 hours on Okinawa and northern Kyushu.

The agency’s Friday morning track had Champi closest to the Sakishima Islands through Saturday, then north through the East China Sea, easing to a severe tropical storm by Saturday morning Japan time. Jiji’s Thursday night outlook had it turning into an extratropical low by Monday around western Japan. Kyushu is in that path if the turn holds.

Why Saturday Rain in the Yilan Mountains Matters

Friday’s wind made the pictures. Saturday’s rain is what the dam and the slope maps are built for. From midnight Thursday to 8 p.m. Friday the weather office had already stacked this on the gauges, before the overnight bands.

RAIN ALREADY DOWN, THURSDAY TO 8 P.M. FRIDAY

The same bulletin warned of extreme torrential rain in the Yilan mountains Friday night into Saturday, and torrential rain in the Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli hills. Hualien’s mountains were in the heavy-rain band. The Saturday northern Taiwan rain forecast kept downpours on the north and northeast after dawn, with more local torrential rain in the hills, while a foehn warning went up for Hualien and Taitung on the lee side.

CEOC had yellow debris-flow alerts on 44 streams in Yilan by 6:30 a.m. and listed 27 districts in eight cities as slide-prone, from Taipei’s Shilin, Beitou, and Wenshan to Wulai, Jinshan, and Hualien. Cho’s weekend order stands even if Taipei’s streets look calmer on Saturday afternoon.

The weather office said the storm circle should leave Taiwan by Saturday evening. The 113 people already moved from the Wanli lake stay out until someone measures what that rain did to the dam, not until the flags in Taipei hang still.