Taiwan bracing for 'near perfect' super typhoon Nepartak

(Image credit: Twitter.com/cnni)

published 7 July 2016

A super typhoon being described as "near perfect" is expected to hit Taiwan early Friday morning.

With winds clocking in at 170 mph and gusts even higher, super typhoon Nepartak is currently the equivalent of a category 5 hurricane, and almost as strong as Soudelor, a super typhoon that slammed into Taiwan and China in 2015, killing at least 36 people and causing billions of dollars worth of damage. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense said thousands of troops have been deployed across Taiwan, and the Taiwan Power Company is estimating more than 3.1 million homes will experience power outages, CNN reports. Extreme flooding could take place in the eastern counties of Yilan and Hualien, areas where the typhoon will first make landfall, and thousands of tourists have been evacuated from the Green and Orchid Islands.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.