(Bloomberg) — Taiwan prepared to resume stock trading as Typhoon Kong-Rey passed, though dangerous winds and heavy rains linger, with Shanghai bracing for the heaviest November rain burst since 1981.
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Workplaces and schools will also reopen Friday in Taipei, the government said. Taiwan had suspended trading on its $2.5 trillion stock market on Thursday due to the storm, which also led to flight cancellations and power outages.
Kong-Rey had maximum sustained winds of 43 meters per second after crossing the west coast of Taiwan’s main island, according to weather authorities. That’s equivalent to a tree-snapping Category 2 hurricane. The typhoon soaked parts of northern Philippines just after the nation was hit by a separate storm.
Kong-Rey is in the Taiwan Strait and expected to edge toward the Chinese province of Fujian as it curves into the East China Sea, according to the Taiwan weather bureau.
Parts of Shanghai could see as much as 280 millimeters (11 inches) of rain overnight into Friday, potentially making it the city’s heaviest rainfall event in November in four decades, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.
Taiwan’s stock trading halt was the third this year due to a storm, the first time that’s happened since 2015. Neighboring Hong Kong ended its decades-long practice of shutting markets during storms in late September.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the go-to chipmaker for Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp., has activated routine typhoon alert preparation at its plants. A raft of companies issued exchange filings announcing delays to board and shareholders meetings, and the delivery of cash dividends.
Taiwan rail services have been suspended, and hundreds of domestic and international flights canceled. The storm has already caused one death, injured 73 people and forced the evacuation of over 9,600, Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operations Center said. More than 137,000 households are without power, data from state-owned Taipower show.
Powerful Typhoon
Kong-Rey is a large storm, with strong to typhoon-force winds extending up to 660 kilometers from the center, according to the Philippines’ weather agency. That makes it wider than Hurricane Helene, which struck Florida in September, inundating cities and towns far from the coast.
The last typhoon of similar strength to make a direct hit and track over Taiwan so late in the year was Gilda, which struck in November of 1967, according to the local weather agency. In 2007, Krosa — also of similar intensity — clipped the northeastern part of the island before tracking toward China.
Large parts of Taiwan’s mountainous eastern region will still see heavy rainfall overnight, with some areas getting more than 300 millimeters over the next 12 hours. More rainfall on already waterlogged soil from Krathon could heighten the risks of flooding and landslides.
–With assistance from Yasufumi Saito, Danny Lee and Jeanny Yu.
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