Residents take shelter as major typhoon in Pacific batters remote US islands

A super typhoon with ferocious winds and heavy rain is battering a group of remote US islands in the Pacific, with people seeking shelter from the storm.

The centre of Super Typhoon Sinlaku was roaring along the Northern Mariana Islands early Wednesday local time, the National Weather Service said.

The monster storm is the strongest tropical typhoon on Earth so far this year and was packing winds of up to 150mph that were likely to bring widespread power outages to the islands that are home to roughly 50,000 people.

Some areas already were seeing extensive flooding.

“It’s hitting us hard,” said mayor Ramon Jose Blas Camacho of Saipan, where it was night-time.

He told the Associated Press: “It’s so difficult for us to respond with this heavy rain, heavy wind to rescue people. Objects are just flying left and right.”

Mr Camacho said some people have been rescued. He said trees were thrown about and wooden and tin structures had collapsed.

Further south, in Guam, a US territory with several US military installations and about 170,000 residents, tropical force winds and torrential rainfall were leading to flash flooding, the weather service said.

The typhoon slowed to a crawl as it approached the islands, raising fears that the fierce winds will not go away quickly and worsen its impact.

“This is not going to be an easy night for anyone across Tinian or Saipan. This is going to be a loud night,” said Landon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the weather service. Many “will wake up to a different island”, he said during a Facebook video broadcast.

Saipan is the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands. The worst of the storm was hitting during darkness and was expected to last for hours until at least daybreak on Wednesday, the weather service said.

Mr Camacho was concerned about the slow speed of the storm.

“That’s the scary part,” he said. “It’s better to speed up so it can just exit.”

About 50,000 people live on the Northern Mariana Islands, with most on Saipan, known for its laid-back resorts.

While it is expected to weaken slightly over the next few days, Sinlaku was crossing the islands as a category 4 typhoon.

In Guam, where Typhoon Mawar knocked out power for days in 2023, US military officials warned personnel to prepare for the storm and shelter in place. The military controls about a third of the land on the island, a critical hub for US forces in the Pacific.

Before turning towards Guam and the Northern Marianas, the storm left significant damage to the outer islands and atolls of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia, said Mr Aydlett from his weather service station on Guam.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday approved emergency disaster declarations for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, allowing for additional help with emergency services.

A super typhoon is a name given to the strongest tropical cyclones.

Monitored by the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre in Guam, super typhoons are the equivalent of category 4 or 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic, with winds of at least 150mph. There have been more than 300 super typhoons identified over the past 80 years.

Typhoons and super typhoons are “very common” in the Pacific, but the peak season is similar to the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from summer to autumn, said Jason Nicholls, AccuWeather’s lead international forecaster.

“As we’ve seen this year, you can get tropical systems in the West Pacific any time of year,” Mr Nicholls said. “But getting them in April is a little unusual.”