Train routes to be suspended ahead of Typhoon Doksuri's landfall

Dozens of trains traveling within Guangdong province and between Guangdong and Zhejiang province will be suspended in the following two days, as Typhoon Doksuri is expected to make landfall in the coastal areas between Fujian province and Guangdong on Friday morning, according to railway operators.

On Thursday, up to 163 trains will be suspended. This includes lines from Shenzhen, Guangdong to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, and from Meizhou to Shantou, both in eastern Guangdong, according to the China Railway Guangzhou Group.

Also on Thursday, four trains from Beijing to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong and five more trains along Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong will be suspended.

Continuing on Friday, up to 40 trains from Hangzhou to Shenzhen and from Meizhou to Shantou will be suspended, the railway operators said.

On Wednesday, China's national observatory upgraded the alert for Typhoon Doksuri to the highest level of red, as the fifth typhoon this year is expected to bring gales and downpours to the southern and eastern parts of the country.

The upgrade was made by the National Meteorological Center only four hours after it issued an orange alert at 6 am. China has a four-tiered color-coded weather warning system for typhoons, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

Forecasts show that the cyclone will enter the northeastern part of the South China Sea between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, before making landfall in coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong on Friday morning.