Typhoon Dolphin lashed Japan’s Okinawa prefecture with sustained winds of 162 kilometres per hour on August 9, 2026, injuring six people and cutting power to more than 50,000 buildings. The storm subsequently moved toward China’s eastern coast, prompting extensive port closures and stranding over 2.4 million TEU of containership capacity.
Impact Across Okinawa and Kagoshima
Typhoon Dolphin made its initial presence felt by striking Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture, where authorities recorded maximum sustained winds of 162 kilometres per hour alongside gusts reaching 216 kilometres per hour. The severe weather injured six people and cut power to more than 50,000 buildings across the region.
Local officials reported that five elderly residents suffered non-life-threatening injuries in Okinawa, with three of those individuals falling directly due to strong winds. A sixth person sustained injuries in neighboring Kagoshima prefecture. Power outages hit nearly 39,000 buildings in Kagoshima, while just over 12,000 structures lost electricity in Okinawa.
Emergency Responses and Landfall Preparations in China
As the cyclone tracked westward toward the Chinese mainland, authorities in Beijing prepared for significant disruption. China designated Dolphin as an orange-category typhoon—the second-highest level in the national system—while raising its emergency response level to level III, which ranks as the second-lowest tier.
According to China’s National Meteorological Center, the storm was projected to make landfall between Zhoushan city in Zhejiang province and Fuding city in Fujian province, carrying core winds of 38 to 45 metres per second. In coastal waters off Zhejiang, China’s National Marine Forecasting Center maintained a red-level wave warning, forecasting towering waves reaching 5 to 8 metres through Sunday afternoon. Shanghai and northern Fujian faced orange-level wave warnings for waters surging between 3 and 5.5 metres.
The threat triggered widespread precautionary shutdowns. Zhejiang, recognized as a major provincial economy and a vital manufacturing and export hub, elevated its coastal typhoon alert to the highest level and halted port operations entirely. Authorities across eastern and southern China also suspended ferry services, halted select construction projects, and ordered fishing vessels to return to port. In Shanghai, Yangshan port had been cleared of vessels by late Friday.
Containership Capacity Stranded and Port Congestion
The maritime fallout across North Asia was immense. The storm left more than 2.4 million TEU of containership capacity stranded after striking China’s eastern coast on August 9, 2026. Terminal operations at Shanghai and Ningbo were suspended on August 7 and August 8 as commercial vessels sought shelter away from the incoming cyclone’s path.
Data from seaexplorer indicated that prior to the peak, vessels destined for Shanghai and Ningbo had moved outside the official anchorage area, leaving only one vessel stationed there on August 9. By August 12, operations had begun to absorb the returning backlog as 117 vessels re-entered the Shanghai anchorage and 60 vessels returned to Ningbo.
The resulting bottlenecks pushed waiting times upward across the region. Port-level figures from August 12 showed a 7-day average vessel waiting time of 2.26 days in Ningbo—an increase of nearly 15 hours compared to the previous week. The Port of Shanghai faced a more severe bottleneck, where the 7-day average waiting time reached 3.95 days, accompanied by vessel arrival delays calculated at 5.63 days and departure delays estimated at 5.37 days.
Regional Supply Chain Disruption and Flight Cancellations
Beyond the immediate port closures, the wider East China region saw more than 200 vessels affected by the weather system. At Ningbo, seven ultra-large container vessels exceeding 20,000 TEU capacity waited for berthing berths, including the 24,188-TEU OOCL Felixstowe
and the 24,116-TEU MSC Raya
.
Operational halts extended into aviation and rail networks. Ningbo Lishe International Airport suspended all flights on Sunday, while select rail services across the Yangtze River Delta faced suspensions. Across the strait in Taiwan, authorities reported the cancellation of 78 flights, primarily international routes. Torrential rains also sparked inland flooding stretching north to Beijing and west to Wuhan in Hubei province.
Maritime tensions surfaced in parallel with the storm response. China instructed ships passing through the Taiwan Strait to heed its traffic control instructions, drawing sharp pushback from Taipei, which denounced the measures as ridiculous and asserted that Beijing holds no right to restrict access to international waters.
Recovery Timeline and Logistics Outlook
Operational conditions across the affected Chinese manufacturing hubs began to recover early in the week as Ningbo resumed terminal activities on Monday afternoon, followed by Shanghai early on Tuesday.
Even with terminals reopening, supply chain analysts note that congestion has spread southward to secondary ports, signaling that shipping delays will likely take several weeks to clear entirely as carriers work through the stranded vessel backlog.
