Noul – the strongest typhoon to hit China so far this year – made landfall at Huizhou city in Guangdong at around 3.50am on Sunday.
The National Meteorological Centre issued its first red typhoon warning of the year – the highest alert level in a four-tier system – on Saturday evening. The following morning it was lowered to an orange alert as the storm weakened.
Noul brought winds of up to 162km/h (100mph), slightly higher than Typhoon Bavi, which hit the east and northeast of the country two weeks earlier.
The storm is projected to slowly move northwest and weaken rapidly, but forecasters warned that it would create torrential downpours across large swathes of the country, including some major tech hubs, such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and the manufacturing heartlands in the Pearl River Delta.
