Typhoon Champi Reaches Category 4 as Guam Braces for Overnight Pass

Guam is in its highest state of readiness on Saturday night as Typhoon Champi, now a Category 4 storm, closes on the island. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center put Champi at 130 mph with gusts to 161 mph at 4 p.m. local time, and forecasters expect it to pass just south of Guam between 4 and 5 a.m. Sunday with winds near 150 mph at its closest approach.

The storm was near 12.5 degrees north and 147.3 degrees east at 4 p.m., heading west-northwest at 15 mph. It is still gaining strength. Earlier on Saturday the National Weather Service office in Guam put Champi at Category 2 with 100 mph winds, 225 miles east-southeast of the island, and warned that a direct pass at Category 3 strength would make it the strongest typhoon to strike Guam since Typhoon Mawar in May 2023. The upgrade to Category 4 came hours later.

The Joint Information Center said all of Guam will feel Category 3 conditions or worse, with the exact point of closest approach still uncertain. Stars and Stripes, reporting on the Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast, put the center clipping the southern edge of the island around sunrise Sunday with 120 mph sustained winds and gusts to 145 mph at the core. The center stressed that any shift in the track could still bring the storm directly over Guam, so no one should judge the danger by how calm it looks at any given moment.

Shelter before sunset

Guam entered Condition of Readiness 1 at 1 p.m. Saturday, the Joint Information Center said. Officials told everyone to be inside a safe shelter before sunset and to stay indoors in a secured, concrete reinforced building. People in southern villages and in coastal, flood prone areas were told to leave for safe shelter, with life threatening coastal flooding expected.

A typhoon warning is in effect for Guam and Rota, and a tropical storm warning covers Tinian and Saipan, the Associated Press reported. A flash flood warning runs into early Sunday, and coastal flood and high surf warnings run into Monday.

Six evacuation centers open

Six emergency evacuation centers are open across the island. Five of them, Machananao Elementary School, Maria Ulloa Elementary School, Astumbo Elementary School, George Washington High School and Talofofo Elementary School, can hold up to 1,964 people between them. A sixth center opened at Inarajan Middle School at 1 p.m.

Weather service meteorologists urged anyone living in a home made of wood and tin to move to an evacuation center or to a fully concrete building. Conditions were expected to worsen through Saturday night, with damaging winds arriving first and the worst of the storm overnight, around the closest pass before dawn on Sunday.