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Tropical storm Linfa is approaching the south of Taiwan. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Update | Bad weather but 'no storm warning' for Hong Kong as two typhoons bear down on region

Hong Kong's weather bureau says the chances of raising a storm alert this week are low, even as a typhoon threatens to near the city on its path, followed by two other storms churning over the western Pacific Ocean.

Severe tropical storm Linfa, packing maximum sustained winds of about 90km/h and gusts of 100km/h, was located about 380km south-southwest of Kaohsiung at 4pm on Monday. The Observatory said it is forecast to move northwards at about 10km/h in the general direction of the south of Taiwan. 

Read more: The deadliest typhoons to hit Hong Kong 

“According to its current path, Linfa will move towards the southern part of Taiwan in the next two or three days and keep a distance from Hong Kong,” said scientific officer Yeung Wai-lung of the Observatory.

“The risk of a typhoon number 1 signal is low," Yeung said.

After Taiwan, Linfa is forecast to move towards the direction of Hong Kong, possibly due to the influence of typhoon Chan-hom, which is now situated about 2,500km east of Linfa.

However, the Observatory said there were "uncertainties" in tracking Linfa’s movement due to Chan-hom's proximity. Two typhoons at close distance can sometimes affect each other in unpredictable ways under what is known as the “Fujiwhara effect”, Yeung said.

The weather in Hong Kong on Monday is likely to be cloudy with a few rain showers and thunderstorms due to a low-pressure trough affecting China’s coastal Guangdong province.

The rest of the week is forecast to be mainly cloudy with isolated showers.

Yesterday, Chan-hom skirted Guam, about 3,400km east of Hong Kong and 1,115km east of the Philippine capital Manila. It is expected to move northwest towards eastern China, Japan and the Korean peninsula, bringing heavy rain and flooding.

Meanwhile, another storm, Nangka, is bearing down on the region and is currently located 1,500km east of Chan-hom. Nangka was upgraded from a tropical depression to a tropical storm on Saturday, but the Observatory said it is currently too far away from Linfa to have any impact on Hong Kong.

Nangka is expected to intensify slowly in the next few days, moving west-northwest through Micronesia.

Flooding, power cuts in Philippines

Linfa was already churning across the northern Philippines, causing floods and power outages in several towns and prompting rescue teams to scramble to evacuate villagers in low-lying communities.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from slow-moving Tropical Storm Linfa, which set off minor landslides in at least two mountainous provinces, officials said. The storm was expected to start blowing away from the country on Monday, according to government forecasters.

Melchito Castro, a regional disaster-response agency chief, said the hardest-hit area was La Union province, where 11 towns were swamped in floodwaters that stranded villagers in their homes. The entire province lost power as the storm lashed, he said.

“There’s massive flooding here in La Union,” Castro said, adding that the pounding rain caused about three rivers to swell. 

Rainwater also cascaded down from a mountain range and swamped La Union, a coastal province of about 800,000 people, officials said.

Police said a private helicopter plunged into a mountainous area in Batangas province south of Manila in bad weather from the storm, killing at least two people and injuring six others. It was not immediately clear if the crash was caused by the weather, and an investigation was under way.

“There was zero visibility when the crash happened,” police Senior Inspector Joel Laraya said.

Linfa was the fifth storm to batter the Philippines this year and the first after a prolonged and dry summer that threatened farmlands and dams that supply tap water and irrigation in many areas. About 20 storms and typhoons batter the country each year. 

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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