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Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
We're coming to you live from London.
I'm James Melendez.
And we're going to begin today in the South China Sea.
And what is the most powerful tropical cyclone of the year so far?
Typhoon Ragassa,
which has been roaring westwards over the last few days with winds of up to 240 kilometres per hour.
That's 150 miles an hour, the equivalent of a category five hurricane.
That's the sound of a storm surge smashing through the doors of a hotel on the southern coast of Hong Kong's main island,
sweeping one man off his feet and causing panic in the lobby.
Earlier the typhoon brushed past Taiwan where the impact was much more serious.
A lake up in the hills burst its banks,
sending a huge volume of water barreling down into the town of Guangfu in Hualien County in the east of the island.
This woman in the town said she and her family spent the night stuck on the second floor before a rescue team arrived in the early morning.
We jumped into a pickup truck with officers from the local authority and just began fleeing for our lives.
Honestly, if we hadn't left early, the water was really intense during that short drive.
I thought we were going to tip over.
The pickup truck was packed with people.
The officers were shouting along the way,