Foreign Correspondence

[fuagf]

Typhoon Conson Strengthens on Path to North Vietnam
July 16, 2010, 12:37 AM EDT

(Adds latest storm forecast from first paragraph)

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Typhoon Conson strengthened over the Pacific Ocean and may pass China’s southern island of Hainan today before making landfall in northern Vietnam tomorrow, the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.

Conson, which earlier this week left 38 people dead as it battered the Philippines, was 207 kilometers (129 miles) southeast of Sanya city on Hainan island at 8 a.m. Beijing time, the center said. The storm’s maximum sustained winds were at 139 kilometers per hour and the system was moving west at 17 kph.

Conson’s winds are forecast to strengthen to 148 kph as it passes to the west of Hainan later today. The storm is expected to weaken into a tropical storm before making landfall southeast of Hanoi in Vietnam tomorrow with sustained winds of 111 kph.

In the Philippines, 47 people remain missing and about 8,900 people are still in evacuation centers after Conson hit the country’s most populous island of Luzon, the country’s National Disaster Coordinating Council said on its website.

Conson is the name of a picturesque mountain region in Vietnam, according to the website of the Hong Kong Observatory, which lists names assigned to cyclones in the Pacific.

--With assistance from Francisco Alcuaz Jr. in Manila. Editors: Aaron Sheldrick, Fergus Maguire.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at [e-mail].

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at [e-mail].

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-16/typhoon-conson-strengthens-on-path-to-north-vietnam.html