Southern China braces for powerful Typhoon Yagi after it sweeps by Hong Kong

A powerful typhoon swept south of Hong Kong and was moving toward a Chinese island province where it was expected to make landfall Friday, forcing many aspects of life in the region to a halt.

Trading on the stock market, bank services and schools were halted in Hong Kong after the city's weather authority raised a No. 8 typhoon signal for Typhoon Yagi, the third-highest warning under the city’s weather system.

Yagi, with maximum sustained winds of 230 kilometers (142 miles) per hour near its center, forced more than 250 people to seek refuge at temporary government shelters and led to cancellations of more than 100 flights in the city.

Heavy rain and strong winds overnight felled dozens of trees across the financial hub before the weather gradually calmed on Friday morning. The weather forecaster was expected to downgrade the typhoon signal in the afternoon.

In Hainan , a tropical holiday island in southern China, residents were bracing for the powerful storm. The province's meteorological service expected Yagi to make landfall somewhere between the province's Wenchang city and Xuwen county in neighboring Guangdong province later Friday.

People built sandbag barriers outside buildings to guard against possible floods and reinforced their windows with tape on Thursday, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.

State media China Daily said classes, work, transportation and businesses were suspended in parts of the province as early as Wednesday evening. Some tourist attractions were closed and all flights at its international airport in Haikou city were grounded on Friday.

Yagi was still a tropical storm when it blew out of the northwestern Philippines into the South China Sea on Wednesday, leaving at least 16 people dead and 17 others missing, mostly in landslides and widespread flooding, and affecting more than 2 million people in northern and central provinces.

More than 47,600 people were displaced from their homes in Philippine provinces, and classes, work, inter-island ferry services and domestic flights were disrupted for days, including in the densely populated capital region, metropolitan Manila.

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Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.