Hong Kong’s weather bureau is tracking a tropical disturbance spinning in the warm waters east of the Philippines, which may develop into the first typhoon of the season next week.

The low-pressure system may enter the South China Sea and move toward the southern coast of mainland China around the middle of next week, according to the Hong Kong Observatory. However, the agency said there’s still uncertainty over how quickly it will develop, and what track the storm may take.

Hong Kong’s typhoon season is expected to start this month and extend to about October, with the bureau predicting five to eight cyclones in 2025. The financial hub last year ended its decades-long practice of shutting markets during severe storms, an action seen as increasingly antiquated after the pandemic showed markets could function when workers were at home.

“If the low-pressure area strengthens into a tropical storm,” it may become the first typhoon in the northwest Pacific and South China Sea in 2025, the weather agency said, adding that the system may also turn toward Taiwan. An European-developed artificial intelligence model consulted by the bureau predicts a relatively strong cyclone.

The low-pressure area is expected to develop over the next few days, aided by warm sea surface temperatures and low wind shear, according to global weather models cited by the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Top photo: Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront in Hong Kong. Photographer: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images.

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