The damage of Typhoon BILIS has increased further to the death toll of 530. The reason of this increase when considerable time has passed since the strike of the typhoon may attribute to false reports made by local municipal governments in China. If they reported bad numbers, they would be punished by the central government, so they wanted to report smaller numbers than the reality. But the central government now orders local governments to report true numbers, which changed their policy. If this kind of concealment activity had been common in the local governments of China, the reliability of statistics on previous typhoon disasters may be questioned.

Typhoon BILIS had gave a big damage to China, and the scale of damage is getting more and more clear. Yesterday a death toll almost doubled to reach 482, and the number of affected people is about 28.3 million. The detail of the damage, however, still remained unclear even though one week has passed since the occurrence of the disaster, so the scale of damage will change more after detailed statistics are collected.

Typhoon BILIS made landfall at China, and moved from Fujian Province to Jiangxi Province, but it had very large and intense rainy clouds in the south, so disasters by flooding from heavy rains took place in Hunan Province, Fujian Province (south) and Guangdong Province. 154 people were killed in China, and traffic system is stopped in Hunan Province, which was most severely damaged. In addition, this typhoon killed 28 people in Philippines, so it affected many countries in Asia.

Typhoon BILIS is moving around the northern part of Taiwan to make landfall at mainland China, but its most intense rainy clouds are in south of Taiwan and moving toward South China Sea. It looks as if the typhoon is split into two parts in north and south of Taiwan. The typhoon is large and its speed is slow, so Sakishima Islands and Taiwan has been within the area of 50kt winds or more for many hours.

Typhoon BILIS is moving in the northern part of the forecast circle, and is now moving very near to Yonaguni Island. The clouds of the typhoon also started to cover Miyako Island and Ishigaki Island. A typhoon like this, namely a large typhoon with little clouds at the center, does not always show the maximum wind and maximum rainfall around the center, so Sakishima Islands and Taiwan will be affected by this typhoon for some time to come.

Typhoon BILIS's cloud system is still not well organized, but it has well-developed rainy clouds in the east and the south, which may cause heavy rains. According to forecast by Japan Meteorological Agency, the typhoon will draw near to Sakishima Islands, and then make landfall at Taiwan.

Typhoon BILIS does not have a core cloud system at the center, so it may be still premature to start the intensification stage. The forecast track of this typhoon follows the previous Typhoon EWINIAR, and this may result in less intensification. By the way, this page could not be viewed since yesterday due to the mistake of our operation. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Typhoon BILIS was formed in east of Philippines. According to forecasts, it will follow the similar track with the previous Typhoon EWINIAR.