China issues red alert as massive typhoon nears Hong Kong

Hong Kong braced for high winds and possible flooding as the biggest typhoon of the year so far raced toward the Asian financial and travel hub, clipping Taiwan and the Philippines as it roared between them early Saturday.

China's National Meteorological Center announced a red alert, its highest level, as Typhoon Usagi maintained its track towards the manufacturing heartland of the Pearl River Delta.

Typhoon Usagi weakened from a super typhoon, those with sustained winds of more than 150 mph, and veered westward during the day -- likely sparing southern Taiwan from the most destructive winds near its eye. At least two people were killed in the Philippines, and two others were missing.

By Saturday evening, Asia-Pacific time, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 108 mph and gusts of up to 131 mph, and was 94 miles southwest of Taiwan's southernmost point, the Central Weather Bureau said. Gusts exceeding 144 mph were recorded on the Taiwanese island of Lanyu.

Typhoon Usagi has a massive diameter of 680 miles, and is the equivalent of a Category 4 storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale used to measure hurricanes in the Western Hemisphere.

Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau warned people to expect up to 47 inches of rain. The storm has already dumped up 20 inches of rain along its eastern and southern coasts in a 20-hour period.

Officials in Hong Kong said Typhoon Usagi poses a "severe threat" to the Chinese city of 7 million people.

State media said nearly 23,000 fishing boats have taken shelter in China’s Fujian province, and more than 4,000 people have been evacuated from coastal areas.

The U.S. Navy’s warning center predicted that Usagi will make landfall near Hong Kong early Monday morning with slightly reduced but still dangerous sustained winds of 113 mph.

With the exception of one cancelled flight, Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair said flights Saturday were unaffected. However, both airlines said flights to and from Hong Kong International Airport would be canceled 6 p.m. Sunday and only resume when conditions permit.

In Taiwan, more than 3,000 people were evacuated from flood-prone areas and mountainous regions, as the government deployed military personnel into potential disaster zones.

Local officials closed mountain highways blocked by landslides and suspended train services connecting the east and west coasts as power outages and rising floodwaters affected thousands of homes. Rivers swollen with fast-moving water and debris thrown down from steep and unstable mountain areas threatened bridges on both sides of the island.

In the Philippines, a 50-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman drowned when a passenger boat capsized in rough waters off northeastern Aurora province, the Office of Civil Defense said Saturday. Two other people were missing from the boat which capsized Friday.

Typhoon Usagi blew out of the country late Saturday after triggering landslides and floods, uprooting trees, and damaging houses, roads and bridges in parts of the northern and central Philippines.

Tropical storms pound eastern Asia each year. Typhoon Bopha caused floods and landslides that left 1,800 people dead or missing -- and displace nearly a million people -- in the southern Philippines last year.

In 2009, Typhoon Morakot killed about 600 people in Taiwan, most of them buried in huge landslides, in one of the island’s worst disasters in recent years.

Typhoons are frequent but rarely deadly in Hong Kong, where the storms occasionally disrupt travel and business in the crucial regional hub. In 1971, Typhoon Rose killed 110 people in the city, which was a British colony until it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Al Jazeera and wire services