2025 Pacific typhoon season

Busy in number, light on energy

By storm count, 2025 was close to normal. The site's archive records 27 tropical storms and 17 typhoons, against the 1991 to 2020 averages of 25.5 tropical storms and 16 typhoons used by the Tropical Storm Risk consortium. Accumulated cyclone energy, a measure that combines strength and duration, reached only 184.3, far short of the 301 that consortium gives as the long-term average. Many storms were weak and short-lived, especially before and after the peak months.

Forecasters had expected a subdued year. La Niña conditions lingered early in 2025 before the Pacific settled toward neutral ENSO. Tropical Storm Risk's May outlook called for slightly below-average activity, pointing to strong easterly wind anomalies in April, the lack of any early storms and a continuing negative phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation, all associated with fewer typhoons. After a slow June and July, its August update lowered the expected number of intense typhoons and cut its energy forecast sharply.

How the season unfolded

The first half of the year was almost empty. The Japan Meteorological Agency tracked a short-lived depression near Palawan in February, but no system reached tropical storm strength until Wutip in the South China Sea in June. Its naming ended a stretch of 169 days without a named storm in the basin and was the fifth-latest start to a typhoon season. The site's archive records Wutip's first tropical-stage observation on 10 June and, in one-minute winds, a brief peak of 64 kt on 14 June as it neared southern China, which makes it the season's first typhoon on this site.

July turned busy, with eight tropical storms. Typhoon Danas struck Taiwan's west coast, Typhoon Wipha crossed the South China Sea toward Guangdong and northern Vietnam, and Typhoon Co-May looped off western Luzon in a Fujiwhara interaction with Tropical Storm Francisco before landfalls in the Philippines and eastern China. Typhoon Krosa formed in the same late-July burst, when three storms were active at once. August added four more, including Typhoon Podul, which crossed Taiwan, and Typhoon Kajiki, which reached northern Vietnam.

September brought the season's peak. Six tropical storms formed, among them Typhoon Ragasa and Typhoon Neoguri, which were active side by side on 20 September, and Typhoon Bualoi, which crossed the central Philippines. October added Typhoon Matmo, Typhoon Halong and Typhoon Nakri, and November produced two of the strongest storms of the year, Typhoon Kalmaegi and Typhoon Fung-Wong, within days of each other. Typhoon Koto closed the season, drifting slowly over the South China Sea until its last tropical-stage observation on 3 December.

The strongest typhoons

Typhoon Ragasa was the season's most intense storm. Forming north of Yap in mid-September, it strengthened over the Philippine Sea and reached one-minute winds of 144 kt, Category 5, on 21 September, with a minimum central pressure of 910 hPa early the next day, near the Babuyan Islands. The Japan Meteorological Agency's own analysis, using ten-minute winds, gave a peak of 205 km/h and a pressure of 905 hPa. Ragasa was the only storm of the year to reach super typhoon strength on the Joint Typhoon Warning Center's scale.

Typhoon Neoguri, which formed north of Wake Island at the same time, peaked at 124 kt on 21 September after rapid intensification over waters of 29 to 30°C. Wind shear and a mid-latitude trough then weakened it, but on 27 September it re-intensified to Category 4 strength near 40°N, one of the strongest cyclones on record at such a high latitude. With 324 recorded hours, it was also the season's longest-lived storm in the archive.

The other major typhoons came later. Typhoon Halong peaked at 119 kt on 7 October southeast of Japan after developing a clear eye. Typhoon Kalmaegi reached 115 kt on 6 November over the South China Sea after crossing the Philippines, and Typhoon Fung-Wong matched that 115 kt on 9 November in the Philippine Sea, a large storm that the Philippine weather agency PAGASA classed as a super typhoon before it reached Luzon.

Landfalls and impacts

The Philippines bore the brunt of the late season. Typhoon Kalmaegi made landfall near Silago, Southern Leyte, on 4 November and crossed the Visayas and Palawan before striking Vietnam. Floods killed at least 269 people in the Philippines, most of them in Cebu, prompting a nationwide state of calamity; reported deaths across all affected countries, including Vietnam and Thailand, reached 288. Days later, Typhoon Fung-Wong came ashore at Dinalungan, Aurora, on 9 November; flooding and landslides killed 33 people in the Philippines, and the storm reached Taiwan as a tropical storm on 12 November.

Typhoon Ragasa made landfall on Panuitan Island in the Babuyan group on 22 September, then struck Guangdong on 24 September. It was blamed for at least 11 deaths in the Philippines and 18 in flooding in Taiwan. In Hong Kong, the Observatory raised Hurricane Signal No. 10 for Ragasa, the second time that year after Wipha in July and the first time in more than 60 years that the highest signal had been hoisted twice in one year.

Typhoon Bualoi made six landfalls in the central Philippines on 25 and 26 September, leaving 37 dead there, then struck Hà Tĩnh province in Vietnam on 29 September, where at least 51 people died and damage was valued at 23.898 trillion dong, about US$950 million. Typhoon Matmo crossed Luzon on 3 October and moved into Guangdong and Guangxi, where Chinese damage estimates reached ¥21.92 billion, about US$3.08 billion in 2025 terms, making it the costliest storm of the season.

Earlier storms also left their mark. Typhoon Danas made landfall near Budai, Chiayi County, on 6 July, the first typhoon to strike Taiwan's west coast since Typhoon Wayne in 1986. Typhoon Co-May was the strongest storm to hit Pangasinan in 16 years. Far to the north, the extratropical remnants of Typhoon Halong brought record flooding to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of western Alaska in October, sweeping homes away in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, with damage in Alaska estimated at US$125 million.

Agency counts and retired names

Agencies agree on 27 tropical storms but differ on typhoons. The Japan Meteorological Agency, which bases its classes on ten-minute sustained winds, counted 13 typhoons; ten-minute winds run lower than one-minute winds for the same storm, so fewer systems cross the typhoon threshold. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center counted 16 from its own one-minute warning data. This site counts 17 from provisional US-agency one-minute best-track values in the IBTrACS archive, at the 64 kt threshold. The same difference explains why the agency's first typhoon was Danas in July, while this site's is Wutip in June.

PAGASA named 23 systems that formed in or entered its area of responsibility, its highest total since 2013. In March 2026 the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee retired eight names used in 2025: Wipha, Co-May, Mitag, Ragasa, Bualoi, Matmo, Kalmaegi and Fung-wong. PAGASA separately retired Crising, Emong, Mirasol, Nando, Opong, Tino and Uwan, the local names of Wipha, Co-May, Mitag, Ragasa, Bualoi, Kalmaegi and Fung-Wong.