Heavy rains and winds that battered east Asia today killed more than 20 in the Philippines, forced authorities to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Japan and put China on alert for its worst floods in years.
In the Philippines, power was gradually restored to millions of homes in and around Manila after Typhoon Conson hit the capital harder than expected on Tuesday night, killing 23 people and leaving dozens missing.
Tropical Storm Risk downgraded the typhoon to a tropical storm today, but the Philippines' weather bureau said it was expected to regain strength as it moved over the South China Sea and headed towards southern China and northern Vietnam.
China's Xinhua news agency said the storm would make landfall in Hainan island's southern resort city of Sanya before moving into Guangdong and Guangxi, bringing heavy rain.
Typhoons and tropical storms regularly hit the Philippines, China, Taiwan and Japan in the second half of the year, gathering strength from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean or South China Sea before normally weakening over land.
Japan's Kyodo news agency said local governments had recommended that some 300,000 people be evacuated from their homes, as the Meteorological Agency forecast heavy rains from a separate weather system for the west and east of the country later today.
TV images showed some houses tilted after being hit by mudslides, swollen rivers and abandoned cars almost submerged in flooded streets. Footage also showed a rescue crew saving a man caught in a fallen tree on a fast-running river. Authorities say at least two people have been killed.
Rain across a large swathe of southern China has already killed almost 600 people this year.
Trains, planes and ferries returned to normal operations in the Philippines as Typhoon Conson tracked toward Hainan.
More than 8,000 people remained in temporary shelters in five cities and 47 towns on Luzon, the Philippines' main island. About 40 per cent of the Luzon power grid's daily requirement of nearly 5,500 megawatts had been restored, although repairs have been slowed by damaged bridges and roads, fallen trees and posts and snapped cables and transmission lines.
Reuters