Hinnamnor made landfall near Geoje, South Korea, early Tuesday morning, local time, leaving roughly 66,000 residents without power across the Korean Peninsula after spreading swaths of heavy rain and damaging winds gusts. At least three deaths were blamed on the storm in South Korea, but officials there said storm preparations helped minimize the death toll, The Associated Press reported.
Hinnamnor, which peaked as a powerful super typhoon and roamed the western Pacific since late August, was downgraded to a severe tropical storm by the Japanese Meteorological Agency as it lost strength on Tuesday. Portions of southern Japan were also slammed with flooding rainfall and powerful winds early this week as the storm pushed from the East China Sea into the Sea of Japan.
As of Tuesday evening, local time, Hinnamnor was located over the Sea of Japan and had 10-minute sustained winds of 69 mph (111 km/h), equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic and East Pacific basins. At the time, the storm was moving to the north-northeast into far eastern Russia.
Damage was caused due to the flooding early in the week, as a holiday resort building was washed away in Nam-gu, Pohang, South Korea. In Yongheung-dong, Pohang, South Korea, a landslide was captured behind a local middle school.
As the calendar flipped from August to September, Hinnamnor carried the title of super typhoon, the first storm to do so this year. In fact, at its peak strength, Hinnamnor was the strongest storm of the season in the basin and the strongest tropical cyclone anywhere on Earth so far this year, according to AccuWeather Lead International Forecaster Jason Nicholls.
Pohang, a city in far southeast South Korea, has recorded 13.5 inches (342 mm) of rainfall from Hinnamnor so far on Tuesday. To the south of Pohang in Gyeongju, South Korea, roughly 8.4 inches (212 mm) of rainfall has been recorded so far.
Ahead of Hinnamnor’s arrival, South Korean officials were hard at work putting proactive safety measures in place. On Monday, about 370 flights were grounded, 100 ferry services were docked and more than 66,000 fishing boats were ordered to return to port, according to The Associated Press. In addition, hundreds of roads and bridges were proactively closed, largely across southern portions of the Korean peninsula and Jeju Island. (Accuweather)
