Category 5 Typhoon Bavi Closes In on Guam With 160 mph Winds
Shelters are filling and the ports are shut as a Category 5-equivalent storm bears down on Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, with landfall due Monday.
Super Typhoon Bavi is forecast to move through the Mariana Islands early Monday morning as a Category 5-equivalent storm, carrying winds of 260km/h (162mph), gusts of up to 315km/h (196mph) and seas of up to 10.7 metres (35 feet), according to the US National Weather Service. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, US territories that are home to about 170,000 and 40,000 people respectively, spent Sunday boarding windows, closing ports and filling shelters.
At 8 a.m. Sunday the storm sat about 300 miles east of Guam, moving west-northwest at 7mph with maximum sustained winds of 160mph, according to a bulletin from Guam's Joint Information Center cited by Stars and Stripes. This general forecast track will take Bavi through the Marianas as a very dangerous category 5 super typhoon Monday morning
, the weather service said.
Guam went to Condition of Readiness 1 at midday, the designation for destructive winds of 58mph or greater expected within 12 hours. Five evacuation shelters opened at 7 a.m. at elementary schools across the island, with evacuees told to bring seven days of food and water. The US Coast Guard closed the ports of Guam, Saipan, Tinian and Rota and ordered commercial vessels of 200 gross tons or more to leave; its own cutters put to sea to ride out the storm.
The forecast language for Rota is unusually blunt. Nearly all trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed
, the weather service warned, adding that fallen trees and poles would isolate residential areas and that many non-concrete homes would be destroyed outright, Al Jazeera reported.
On Guam the preparation was a familiar mix of drill and dread. Pinky Cubacub, a 55-year-old eatery owner, lined up early Saturday to buy $500 worth of plywood for her windows.
"I cannot afford to lose so many days. It hurts. Whatever we're making right now is just for rent, utilities, my staff and supplies. I don't even pay myself yet."
Pinky Cubacub, eatery owner on Guam, speaking to AFP
Others were steadier. My house is concrete, so the worst that can happen is a window could blow in
, said Arabella Paulino, a 48-year-old call centre employee. Flights out have been cancelled, stranding tourists through the storm's passage.
The pattern is what should hold attention here. Bavi is the second super typhoon to cross the region since April, when Sinlaku knocked out power for tens of thousands and tore roofs off buildings in the Northern Marianas. Typhoon Mawar in 2023 did damage that in places took years to repair. And it arrives on a weekend when the US mainland was managing its own extremes, with record July 4 heat from Washington to New York. Concrete construction, hardened power infrastructure and week-long shelter stocks are no longer contingency planning in the Marianas; they are the baseline cost of living there.
At Talofofo Bay on Sunday, a dozen surfers were still in the water, riding the front edge of the storm. "There's quite a lot of debris in the water, but it's a lot of fun," one told AFP. The window for that closes overnight.
