2024 Pacific typhoon season

Season overview

The year opened with the 2023 to 2024 El Niño still in place, and forecasters expected it to fade toward neutral conditions and possibly La Niña by mid-year. Tropical Storm Risk forecast a below-average season in May and trimmed its outlook for accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) twice as the summer stayed quiet, noting that the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation since 2020 had suppressed activity for several years. By late June, PAGASA reported that El Niño had ended.

The storm count ended close to normal, but the energy did not. On the site's measure the season generated an ACE of 207.7, well below the 1991 to 2020 average of about 301 that Tropical Storm Risk uses as its baseline. Much of the season's energy came from a few intense typhoons in the second half of the year, and the season became the deadliest in the basin since 2013, driven above all by Typhoon Yagi.

How the season unfolded

The first tropical-stage observation came on 24 May, one of the latest starts on record, ending a gap of about five months without a named storm in the basin. Typhoon Ewiniar crossed the central Philippines with a string of island landfalls, became the season's first typhoon over Lamon Bay on 26 May and then turned out to sea past Japan. Tropical Depression Maliksi came ashore in Guangdong a few days later. June then passed without a single storm forming, the first such June since 2010.

Activity resumed in mid-July. Tropical Storm Prapiroon crossed Hainan and reached northern Vietnam, while Typhoon Gaemi strengthened quickly over the Philippine Sea, looped off the coast of Taiwan and crossed the island before a final landfall in Fujian. August brought a cluster of systems south and east of Japan: Typhoon Maria reached northern Honshu, Typhoon Ampil passed just south of the Tokyo area near its Category 3 peak, and Typhoon Shanshan struck Kyushu at the end of the month.

September was the busiest month on the map. Yagi dominated its first week, Typhoon Bebinca and Tropical Storm Pulasan both came ashore at Shanghai within days of each other, and Tropical Storm Soulik crossed northern Luzon before reaching central Vietnam. At the end of the month Typhoon Krathon formed near the Luzon Strait and rapidly intensified before striking southern Taiwan. The remnants of Hone, a central Pacific storm, also drifted across the date line near Wake Island in early September.

Late October brought Typhoon Trami, which flooded large parts of Luzon before reaching central Vietnam, and Typhoon Kong-Rey, which struck eastern Taiwan on 31 October. After the crowded first half of November, the basin went quiet for several weeks until Tropical Depression Pabuk formed in the southern South China Sea in late December. The last tropical-stage observation came on 26 December.

Strongest storms

Typhoon Yagi was the season's most intense storm. After crossing northern Luzon as a tropical storm, it exploded over the South China Sea and peaked on 5 September with one-minute winds of 145 kt and a central pressure of 907 hPa, the lowest of the year. It was one of only a handful of Category 5 typhoons recorded in the South China Sea.

Two late-season storms also reached Category 5. Typhoon Kong-Rey peaked at 140 kt around 30 October, with a pressure of 915 hPa, before bearing down on Taiwan, and Typhoon Man-Yi reached 140 kt and 924 hPa on 16 November as it approached Catanduanes. Behind them came a group of Category 4 storms: Krathon at 135 kt, Yinxing and Usagi at 130 kt, Gaemi at 125 kt and Shanshan at 115 kt. Ampil rounded out the nine major typhoons at 110 kt.

Typhoon Ewiniar, the first typhoon of the year, was also the longest-tracked system, with about 13 days of records from its origin near Palau to its extratropical remnants. Typhoon Man-Yi had the longest tropical stage, spending more than 12 days as a tropical cyclone as it tracked from the Marshall Islands to the South China Sea.

November's four typhoons

The most unusual stretch of the season came in November. On 11 November Yinxing, Toraji, Usagi and Man-Yi were all active at once, the first time since records began in 1951 that four tropical cyclones had been active together in November. The next day two typhoons were active in the South China Sea at the same time, which had not happened since 1992.

All four struck Luzon within about ten days. Typhoon Yinxing came ashore in Cagayan on 7 November after peaking at 130 kt, Typhoon Toraji crossed Aurora on 11 November, Typhoon Usagi hit Cagayan as a super typhoon on 14 November, and Typhoon Man-Yi struck Catanduanes on 16 November before a second landfall in Aurora the next day. The strikes came only weeks after Trami and Kong-Rey had already affected the northern Philippines.

Notable landfalls and impacts

Yagi caused the heaviest losses. After weakening over Luzon, it hit Wenchang on Hainan, crossed Haikou and came ashore again at Xuwen in Guangdong, then regained Category 4 strength before landfall between Haiphong and Quang Ninh on 7 September, the strongest storm on record to strike northern Vietnam. Its rains triggered floods and landslides across Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. Yagi is blamed for 844 deaths and about US$14.7 billion in damage (2024 dollars) across all affected countries, making it the main reason 2024 ranks among the costliest seasons on record.

Typhoon Gaemi never made landfall in the Philippines, but its circulation enhanced the southwest monsoon, and with Tropical Storm Prapiroon it flooded much of Luzon before the typhoon struck Taiwan and Fujian. Gaemi is blamed for 152 deaths and US$4.57 billion in damage (2024 dollars) across its track. Typhoon Trami, known in the Philippines as Kristine, brought torrential rain to Luzon in late October and caused at least 178 deaths across the Philippines, China, Vietnam and Thailand, with damage of more than US$400 million (2024 dollars).

Japan took several hits. Typhoon Shanshan prompted Kagoshima's first special emergency warning since 2022 and evacuation orders for nearly two million people across Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures, and caused at least six deaths in Japan. In China, Typhoon Bebinca became the strongest typhoon to strike Shanghai since 1949, and Pulasan followed it ashore two days later.

Taiwan faced two rare strikes. Krathon made landfall near Kaohsiung on 3 October, the first storm to come ashore on Taiwan's densely populated western plains since 1977, and was linked to at least four deaths and more than 700 injuries in Taiwan and five deaths in the Philippines. Kong-Rey struck Taitung on 31 October as the latest typhoon in a calendar year to make landfall on the island and the most powerful since 1996, killing at least three people in Taiwan; in Batanes its winds destroyed the historic church at Itbayat.

Retired names and how storms were counted

The season's toll led to a record number of retirements. In February 2025 the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee removed nine names: Ewiniar, Yagi, Krathon, Trami, Kong-rey, Toraji, Man-yi and Usagi for the damage and deaths they caused, and Jebi because it sounded like an offensive word in Croatian. PAGASA separately retired eight Philippine names, Aghon, Enteng, Julian, Kristine, Leon, Nika, Ofel and Pepito, the most from one season since its current naming system began in 2001.

Counts for this season depend on who is measuring. The Japan Meteorological Agency named 26 tropical storms and counted 13 typhoons using ten-minute winds, and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center counted 21 tropical storms and 14 typhoons from its own warnings. The site's 23 tropical storms and 15 typhoons use US-agency one-minute winds during the tropical stage. Maliksi, Wukong and Pabuk were named by JMA but peak at 30 kt in the US record, so the site maps them as depressions; one-minute winds also run higher than ten-minute winds, which is why Maria and Trami count as typhoons here but only as severe tropical storms in JMA's tally.