Storm Nesat enters East Sea

According to the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, the eye of the storm lay 950 km east-northeast of the Paracel Islands and is moving in the west-northwest direction at the speed of 15-20 kph.

In the next 24 hours, it will stand 630 km northeast of the Paracels with a wind speed of 118 kph. By 4 p.m. Tuesday, it will be 270 km northeast of the islands and its wind speed may rise to more than 130 kph.

After that, it will move west-southwest at 15 kph and is likely to gain strength, according to the center.

Nguyen Van Huong, head of the center’s weather forecast department, said there are now three scenarios predicted for Nesat in the East Sea: the storm meets the cold spell from the north and gets weak, and when approaching the central coast, it devolves into a tropical depression; the storm moves to the area near Hainan Island of China and meets the cold spell but it has got weaker by then and therefore, the storm keeps moving straight to the central coast yet wind speed will drop to 75-102 kph; it moves to Hainan, meets the cold spell but it is strong and therefore the storm is weakened and disappear before reaching the coast.

Both the Japan Meteorological Agency and the Hong Kong Observatory said the storm will head for the middle of the central coast but when it approached the coast, it will turn and make landfall in the north-central region. It said the storm will be strongest on Tuesday with the highest wind speed at 145 kph.

Nesat makes the sixth storm in Vietnam’s waters so far this year.

It arrives shortly after storm Son Ca raged the central region, resulting in historic rains of up to 795 mm from 7 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday and unprecedented flooding for Da Nang City.