An observational analysis of Super Typhoon Yagi (2024) over the South China Sea

Super Typhoon Yagi in 2024 was the second strongest typhoon on record over the South China Sea. This paper documents a number of meteorological observations of Yagi. The dropsonde data provided valuable information about the strength, wind structure and thermodynamic structure inside the eye of Yagi. The rapid intensification of Yagi is studied using sea temperature and salinity profiles. Though not bringing severe damage to Hong Kong, Yagi did bring about severe weather to the territory, including the third record high gust in the urban area and the occurrence of waterspouts associated with supercells. They are documented in some details in this paper using for the first time the three dimensional wind fields retrieved from weather radars. In particular, the violent gusts had clear signature to be associated with downward atmospheric motion. It is hoped that the present paper could serve as useful reference for the forecasters and may be used to develop nowcasting tools for weather warnings, e.g. for the violent gusts associated with the outer rainbands of a typhoon. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2025.