Typhoon Soudelor batters Taiwan before heading to China

A woman hangs on to her umbrella in Taipei.

A fisherman walks at a port in Ningde, Fujian province, in China, on Friday.

The path, directly across Taiwan, that the typhoon is expected to follow will encompass the “rugged terrain” of the island’s mountainous interior. Sam Yeh/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images …

People walk against strong winds as Typhoon Soudelor approaches Taiwan in Taipei, August 7, 2015. Wally Santana/Associated Press …

Fishermen arrange baskets as they prepare before Typhoon Soudelor hits Wenzhou, Zhejiang province.

Fishing boats returned to harbours along the coast as the storm approached.

Typhoon Soudelor is the strongest typhoon of 2015 with an average wind speed of 123 kilometers per hour and rainfall between 250 to 330 millimeters. Residents of Saipan are without water and electricity and are rationing gasoline — four days after Typhoon Soudelor hit the most populated island in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas on Sunday. In addition, massive waves have been rolling ashore since Thursday, with the greatest threat of storm surge flooding along and to the north of where the storm’s eye makes landfall.

The strongest winds were in Suao, where gusts reached 237 kilometres per hour, the weather bureau said.

The outer rim of the storm, classified as a medium typhoon, the second on the CWB’s three-tier system, touched land in Eastern Taiwan at around 5 p.m. yesterday.

Flights were cancelled, offices shuttered and schools suspended across the island.

“Although it gained’t have the identical impact of Typhoon Morakot, this typhoon continues to be very nicely developed”, Taiwan’s Premier Mao Chi-kuo stated Thursday, referring to a storm that killed 600 individuals in 2009.

An 8-year-old girl died after being swept out to sea as Soudelor churned on, forcing thousands to flee and troops to be placed on standby, officials told the South China News. The girl’s twin sister is unaccounted for, it said.

City road crews remove trees brought down by strong winds from… The group was dragged out to sea from shallow waters at a beach in the northeastern county of Yilan.

The typhoon is expected to hit China on Saturday night with Chinese authorities ordering the evacuation of an estimated 158,000 people and ships ahead of its landfall.