Taiwan Halts Stock Trade, Shuts Schools as Typhoon Champi Nears

Taiwan will suspend trading on its stock exchange and shut schools in most areas on Friday as Typhoon Champi approaches the island, disrupting flights and threatening heavy rainfall.

Champi is currently 713 kilometers (443 miles) southwest of Japan’s Okinawa and forecast to pass closest to northern Taiwan late Friday into Saturday, according to the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center. While the storm has weakened slightly from super typhoon strength, it’s still packing top sustained winds of 213 kilometers per hour, equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane.

Stock market settlements scheduled for Friday will be postponed to the next business day, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said. Taipei, along with major hubs including Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, announced the work and class suspensions in a government notice and a report by the official Central News Agency. A total of 126 domestic flights and 40 international and cross-strait flights had been canceled as of 6 p.m. local time Thursday, according to Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration.

Champi is the 10th storm in the northwest Pacific Ocean to hit super typhoon strength this season, double the long-term average and just shy of a record 13 in 2015 — also an El Niño year, the Hong Kong Observatory said. Champi is among the most powerful this year, based on wind speeds and central pressure, according to Climatlas, a database maintained by the meteorologist Ryan Maue.

“El Niño is the main driver,” said James Caron, director of meteorological operations for North America and Asia at Atmospheric G2. Storms tend to form farther east during the climate phenomenon, giving a cyclone more time to accumulate energy over open and warm waters as it churns toward land. “That time is what lets it reach super typhoon strength,” Caron added.

Taiwan is expected to take the brunt of Champi’s impact, with torrential rain and destructive winds threatening the island. The storm is forecast to maintain typhoon intensity as it brushes the eastern coast of mainland China over the weekend before heading toward Kyushu in southwest Japan, the JTWC said.

There still remains considerable uncertainty over Champi’s track, with AI-based models keeping the typhoon offshore of Taiwan while many physics-based models show a brief landfall over the island’s north. That should become clear within about 24 hours, Atmospheric G2’s Caron said.

“The biggest threat is extreme rain over northern and northeastern Taiwan,” he said. “In late October the northeast monsoon is already in place, and a typhoon passing nearby pulls that flow into the island’s terrain,” potentially dumping as much as 18 inches (457 millimeters) over greater Taipei and risking catastrophic flash floods and landslides, Caron added.

As Champi veers close to the Chinese coast, it is forecast to bring heavy rains to Shanghai and parts of Zhejiang province this weekend, according to the China Meteorological Administration. The weather bureau is also warning of farmland waterlogging and wind damage to crops in coastal areas of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.

Photograph: Waves crash along the coast as Typhoon Champi approaches Taiwan in Keelung on Oct. 22, 2026; photo credit: I-Hwa Cheng/AFP/Getty Images