Overturned Vehicle Lies In Street After Typhoon Bavi
A woman walks past a vehicle knocked over by winds from Typhoon Bavi in Wenling, in China's eastern Zhejiang province, on July 12, 2026. The storm was downgraded to a severe tropical storm after making landfall in eastern China, where authorities had evacuated nearly two million people in its path.

Typhoon Bavi made landfall in eastern China late Saturday and was downgraded to a severe tropical storm Sunday, after authorities evacuated nearly two million people in its path, while the storm's death toll in the Philippines climbed to 18.

WHAT HAPPENED

Bavi came ashore around 11:20 p.m. Saturday local time in Zhejiang province's Yuhuan city, packing sustained winds of about 144 kph (90 mph), equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane, before bouncing back offshore and making a second landfall roughly 20 minutes later in nearby Yueqing city, China's National Meteorological Center said. State broadcaster Xinhua reported more than 1.7 million people had been evacuated from Zhejiang alone by Saturday morning, with the figure climbing toward nearly two million once more than 130,000 evacuations in Fujian, over 100,000 in Beijing and about 34,000 in Shanghai's coastal areas were included. Beijing authorities ramped up water discharge from the capital's Miyun Reservoir to capture potential floodwaters as torrential rain reached the north. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties following landfall, and the storm was expected to continue weakening as it tracks northwestward inland.

In the Philippines, the Office of Civil Defense said the death toll from landslides and flooding triggered by Bavi's enhanced monsoon rains rose to 18, most of them on the southern island of Mindanao, up from the 11 confirmed earlier in the weekend. Nearly 11,000 people across the archipelago fled their homes to 77 emergency shelters, and dozens of ports remained closed with 313 vessels sheltering in place.

Bavi's strong-wind radius shrank to 350 kilometers as it skirted north of Taiwan, sparing the island the direct hit its Central Weather Administration had initially warned could be its largest storm threat since 1987. Even so, more than 14,000 people were evacuated from mainly mountainous areas, hundreds of flights were canceled, and more than 170,000 households lost power; Taiwan's fire department confirmed at least 113 injuries, mostly from falls involving motorcycles and bicycles on slick roads. Thousands of households in Japan's Okinawa also lost power, with the Miyako region hit hardest.

The landfall compounds an already difficult stretch for southern and central China, where flooding and a reservoir dam burst from Tropical Storm Maysak earlier in the week killed at least 39 people and sent dozens of rivers over their banks.

WHY IT MATTERS

Bavi's actual landfall intensity and evacuation scale — nearly two million people moved across four Chinese population centers — confirms the storm posed a serious threat to one of China's most economically significant coastal corridors even after weakening substantially from its earlier Category 5-equivalent peak near the Marianas. The rising Philippine toll again illustrates how a storm's indirect monsoon effects can prove as deadly as a direct hit, while the absence of immediate Chinese casualty reports suggests the evacuation effort may have limited the human cost despite the storm's economic disruption.

WHAT'S NEXT

Attention now turns to confirming whether Zhejiang, Fujian and Shanghai's petrochemical and shipping infrastructure sustained damage or disruption, and whether Chinese authorities report any casualties as assessments continue. Bavi is forecast to keep weakening as it turns north and dissipates west of Shanghai by around July 13, while the Philippines continues search efforts for several people still listed as missing from Friday's landslides.

Originally published on HNGN