Typhoon Noul batters southern China as 700,000+ evacuate, flights grounded

Typhoon Noul crossed into southern China early Sunday morning, its winds still fierce enough to reshape the landscape as it moved inland. The storm had intensified over the South China Sea with sustained winds near 90 miles per hour before making landfall at approximately 3:50 a.m. local time along the coast of Huidong county in Huizhou, a city in Guangdong province. By the time it reached shore, the system had weakened somewhat—down to 68 mph—but it remained powerful enough to trigger one of the largest emergency evacuations in the region in recent memory.

More than 715,000 people had been moved to safety across Guangdong province ahead of the storm's arrival, according to China National Radio. The evacuation was methodical and massive, a reflection of how seriously local authorities treated the threat. Train services across the province were suspended for Sunday, effectively cutting off one of the region's primary transportation arteries. The decision to halt rail traffic underscored the severity of conditions authorities expected as the typhoon moved through.

Hong Kong, sitting just across the border from Guangdong, braced for impact as Noul approached. The city's Observatory tracked the system's movement across the South China Sea and issued warnings as it edged closer to the coast. At Hong Kong's airport, the disruption was immediate and sweeping. More than 350 flights were canceled for Saturday and Sunday alone, with additional cancellations looming as the storm's path became clearer. The airport's operations ground nearly to a halt, stranding travelers and disrupting supply chains that depend on the hub's constant flow of cargo and passengers.

The physical toll began appearing even before the storm's worst winds arrived. On Saturday afternoon, a section of large scaffolding on a high-rise building in Hong Kong collapsed, local police reported. The incident, dramatic as it was, resulted in no initial injuries—a narrow escape in a densely packed urban environment where falling debris can be catastrophic.

The storm's reach extended beyond Guangdong and Hong Kong. Taiwan's weather service reported that Noul was bringing rainfall to parts of southern and eastern Taiwan as it passed over waters south of the island. However, the system was moving away from Taiwan by Saturday, sparing the island from the worst of the impact. Parts of southeastern Fujian province, just north of Guangdong, were also in the forecast track for heavy rain and strong winds through the weekend.

Noul arrived in a region already worn by recent typhoons. Earlier in July, another major storm had swept across eastern China, forcing the evacuation of more than 2 million people when it made landfall on July 11. Just weeks before that, Typhoon Maysak had struck southern China on July 3. The succession of storms—three significant systems in less than a month—meant that communities were cycling through emergency protocols with little time to recover between events, testing both infrastructure and the resilience of populations accustomed to seasonal typhoons but challenged by their increasing frequency and intensity.