Weather Havoc in China - Typhoon Neoguri

China ordered tens of thousands of fishing boats back to port last Friday as it braced for the first typhoon of the year. Typhoon Neoguri.

Its said that Typhoon Neoguri will be the earliest typhoon of the season to affect the south China region since the founding of new China in 1949. Neoguri, which means "raccoon" in Korean, was expected to be 'one of the strongest in history' to hit the region. The typhoon season usually starts in May.

Typhoon tracker Tropical Storm Risk labelled the storm as category two in a scale going up to five, with maximum sustained winds of 154 to 177kmh. Strong gales caused the cancellation of ferries across the Qiongzhou Strait between Hainan and Guangdong early Friday.

Typhoons, known in the West as hurricanes, are cyclonic storms which draw strength from the warm waters of the South China Sea and regularly target the Philippines, Japan, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong over the summer, sometimes with catastrophic effect.

Chinese scientists have blamed global warming for increasing weather extremes, including devastating typhoons, snow storms, floods and drought, which they say are likely to get worse.