Super Typhoon Bavi tore through Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands with 180 mph winds, knocking out power across both U.S. territories and leaving residents to dig out from fallen trees, overturned vehicles and record rainfall, all while the storm barrels westward toward Taiwan and mainland China.
No deaths have been reported on Guam or in the Northern Mariana Islands. But the damage is widespread, and the recovery is complicated by a bitter fact: this is the second super typhoon to strike the Northern Marianas in just a few months.
Bavi slammed the islands Monday afternoon, FOX Weather reported, with wind gusts hitting 111 mph at both the Guam airport and on Saipan. The Guam airport also recorded 12.64 inches of rain, a new daily record. Photographs from the aftermath show debris washed ashore in Guam parks, motorists navigating flooded roads, and traffic signs ripped from their posts.
For residents of Saipan and Tinian, Bavi arrived before the last storm's wreckage was even cleaned up. Super Typhoon Sinlaku struck the Northern Mariana Islands on April 14, packing peak winds of 185 mph and a central pressure of 890 millibars. That storm caused an estimated $1.5 billion or more in damage.
The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation reported that power has been restored to parts of Tinian but that crews were having difficulty bringing parts of the Saipan power plant back online, in part because of infrastructure damage left over from Sinlaku. That is the grim math these islands face: one catastrophe layered on top of another, with the same utility crews and the same fragile grid absorbing both hits.
On Guam, the Guam Power Authority said restoration efforts are underway, with the least damaged villages expected to come online first. Residents had moved to emergency evacuation centers ahead of Bavi's arrival, and last-minute preparations were photographed as early as July 5.
The storm is not finished. Still packing winds over 150 mph, Bavi is creeping westward through an environment of very warm ocean water, conditions that allow it to maintain extreme strength. The FOX Forecast Center expects the typhoon to weaken gradually as it crosses cooler waters in the Philippine Sea, but it could still make landfall in Taiwan by Saturday.
Even in a weakened state, Bavi is projected to hit Taiwan as a powerful typhoon with wind gusts equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane, peaking over 100 mph. Northern Taiwan faces the threat of heavy rain, flash flooding, potential landslides, and dangerous storm surge.
After crossing Taiwan, Bavi is expected to reach mainland China still carrying Category 2-equivalent force. The precise landfall locations on both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland remain uncertain, and forecasters have not specified which cities or coastal regions face the greatest risk.
Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are American soil. Their residents are U.S. citizens. And right now, those citizens are living without reliable electricity, clearing storm debris for the second time in three months, and watching another super typhoon churn away from their shores toward the next coastline in its path.
The zero-death toll is a testament to the preparation of local residents and the emergency evacuations that preceded Bavi's arrival. But survival is not the same as recovery. The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation is wrestling with a power plant that was already damaged before this storm arrived. The Guam Power Authority is triaging villages by damage severity. These are small utilities on small islands, and the scale of repeated destruction tests their limits.
The $1.5 billion-plus damage estimate from Sinlaku alone gives some sense of the financial burden. Bavi's toll has not yet been calculated, but the combination of 111 mph gusts, record flooding, and territory-wide blackouts will add substantially to the bill.
Several questions hang over the recovery and the storm's westward march. No injury figures have been released for Guam or the Northern Marianas, even though no fatalities have been confirmed. The percentage of power customers still without electricity on Guam has not been disclosed. And the specific areas of northern Taiwan and mainland China in Bavi's projected path have not been publicly detailed by forecasters.
What is clear is the pattern. The western Pacific's warm waters are fueling storms of extraordinary power, and U.S. territories sit directly in their path. Two super typhoons in roughly three months, both with winds near or above 180 mph, both striking the same small chain of islands, that is not a hypothetical scenario or a climate-model projection. It is what just happened.
For the people of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian, the immediate task is restoring power, clearing roads, and getting life back to something resembling normal. The broader question, whether federal disaster infrastructure and utility investment in these territories are adequate to the threat they face, will follow.
These are Americans picking up the pieces. They deserve the same urgency Washington would bring to any state on the mainland facing back-to-back catastrophes.
When the same communities absorb two super typhoons in a single season and the power plant still can't stay online, the problem is no longer the weather. It's the preparation.
