Super Typhoon Dolphin is still several days from any Asian coastline and forecasters do not yet agree on where it goes. Published projections spread across roughly 5 to 9 August, and the landfall region ranges from the Fujian and Zhejiang coast to a track that stays well north. Track and intensity estimates both remain uncertain. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center has estimated sustained winds at 160 mph, while other agencies have published lower figures.
Because the track is unsettled, the question worth answering this week is not where Dolphin lands. It is which of your China bookings already sit behind a queue, and how old that queue is. Those answers differ sharply depending on whether your cargo loads from the north or the south, and most operators are treating China as one corridor when it is currently behaving as two.
Three Landfalls Since 3 July, in Two Different Places
The storm sequence matters more than any single storm, because each one landed on a different stretch of coast and left its backlog in a different place.
| Storm | China landfall | Corridor | Container ports affected |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maysak | 3 July 2026 | South China | Limited reported container impact |
| Bavi | 11 July 2026 | East China | Shanghai, Ningbo, Qingdao |
| Noul (Hongxia) | 26 July 2026 | South China | Yantian, Shekou, Nansha, Hong Kong |
| Dolphin | Projected 5 to 9 August | East China (projected) | Track not settled |
Noul was the strongest storm to make landfall in China so far in 2026, coming ashore at Huidong County in Guangdong early on 26 July with maximum sustained winds near its centre of about 45 metres per second. Bavi, two weeks earlier, hit the eastern seaboard instead.
The Queue Was Already There Before the First Storm
Chinese port congestion did not start with the typhoons. Linerlytica put 10.9% of the global container fleet at anchorage as of 29 June, about 3.72 million TEU waiting to berth and the highest reading since 2022, with North Asian ports accounting for 38% of it. On one day in that week, 156 ships sat at anchorage across Shanghai and Ningbo against 87 at berth.
Hapag-Lloyd had been flagging vessel bunching at both ports since 8 June. Average waiting time for Gemini Cooperation vessels at Shanghai moved from roughly 24 to 48 hours in late May to a 60-hour average by 30 June. Vizion measured arrival-to-berth at Shanghai at 79 hours as of 29 June, close to double the 42 hours recorded on 18 May.
This is the part that changes how you should read a second storm. The slack that absorbs a disruption is spare berth windows, empty depot capacity and open feeder slots. Peak-season bunching had already consumed most of it before Bavi arrived, which is why the recovery curve after each storm has been longer than the storm itself.
East China: A Three-Week-Old Backlog, Partly Cleared
Ahead of Bavi’s late-11 July landfall, Ningbo suspended container collection and delivery, and Shanghai cleared vessels from its Yangshan and Waigaoqiao terminals. Both reopened, but Linerlytica subsequently estimated around 2 million TEU of containership capacity delayed across North Asian waters, with more than half of all global port congestion concentrated in the region. Waiting times around Shanghai were reported in the range of 72 to 144 hours.
Three weeks later the queue has thinned without disappearing. Through the two weeks ending 26 July, the Tradlinx Port Congestion Index recorded Ningbo easing from CONGESTED to BUSY rather than returning to a normal band. Dalian moved the other way, adding 14.2 hours and shifting from STABLE to BUSY. Across Northeast Asia, 39 ports were rated BUSY and 26 CONGESTED out of 258 monitored, at an average berthing delay of 4.1 hours.
Qingdao has been recovering from post-typhoon vessel bunching more steadily than the two larger gateways. It is the East China port least likely to be a constraint on a booking made this week.
South China: A Five-Day-Old Backlog, Barely Started
Noul put a different set of ports on the floor. Terminals across Fujian and South China began resuming from 26 July and moved into backlog clearance, prioritising accumulated vessel queues and container backlogs.
Yantian and Shekou have resumed operations with congestion still high. Kuehne+Nagel reported limited terminal appointments, yard pressure, road congestion and container yard backlogs across both, and flagged a raised risk of cargo missing vessel cut-offs. Hong Kong avoided major port disruption and was averaging around 1.07 days of vessel waiting time, though regional schedule adjustments were still working through.
Yantian carries a second constraint that has nothing to do with weather. Terminal capacity there has been limited by quay crane upgrades and berth restrictions since before Noul, and arrivals concentrating in from North and Central China were already expected to raise congestion risk further.
One caveat on the index readings above. The measurement window closed on 26 July, the day Noul made landfall, so the Yantian figure in that edition describes the port going into the storm rather than coming out of it. Treat South China port levels from that window as a pre-storm baseline.
If your team is re-checking China port calls one carrier portal at a time while a fourth storm forms, it may be worth walking through how ops teams monitor container-level exceptions across a whole corridor at once.
Where Dolphin Points, and How Much That Is Worth Right Now
Model guidance carrying Dolphin toward the Fujian and Zhejiang coast has it passing waters north of Taiwan from around 5 August, with a coastal approach possible on 6 August, gusts near 100 knots and waves reaching 12 metres. Longer-range projections push the eastern China timing out to around 9 August and leave landfall open. Forecasts differ on both Dolphin’s path and its intensity.
On the projections that bring it to the mainland, Dolphin lands on the East China corridor, which is the one carrying the older and partly cleared queue. South China would sit outside the primary impact zone while still working through Noul. That is the opposite of the intuitive read, where the most recently hit ports feel like the exposed ones.
A track this unsettled does not support a re-routing decision yet. It does support knowing, today, which bookings would need one.
What to Re-check This Week
- Sort open China bookings by load port into the East China and South China groups. The exposure profile is different for each and a single country-level view will hide it.
- For East China loadings, establish whether the vessel is already in the anchorage queue or still inbound. Vessels already waiting are the ones a second suspension compounds.
- For South China loadings, confirm terminal appointment availability and any revised cut-offs at Yantian and Shekou before assuming a booked sailing still works.
- Watch feeder and barge cancellations rather than mainline advisories. Feeder schedules break first and are the earlier signal.
- Hold re-routing decisions until the track converges, and use the interval to identify which specific containers would be affected under each scenario.
Backlog age is the variable that decides how much a new disruption costs you. A port five days into clearing a queue and a port three weeks into clearing one will absorb the same storm very differently, and the difference shows up in your cargo before it shows up in a carrier advisory.
Further Reading
- New Super Typhoon Could Disrupt Taiwan & China Ports Again (Signal Group / AXSMarine)
- Super Typhoon Dolphin barrels towards Asia as it reaches 160 mph winds (FOX Weather)
- Super Typhoon Dolphin set to churn Vietnam’s waters next week (VnExpress International)
- Typhoon Noul hits South China’s Guangdong (Global Times)
- Port operational updates from around the world (22 to 28 July 2026) (Kuehne+Nagel)
- Port operational updates from around the world (15 to 21 July 2026) (Kuehne+Nagel)
- China’s Port Congestion Faces Fresh Test as Typhoon Bavi Approaches (Sourcing Journal)
- Typhoon Bavi Continues to Impact Eastern China Ports (Beckchoice, citing Linerlytica)
- Asia Supply Chain Weather Center: Typhoon Noul Impact Tracker (SEKO Logistics)
- Port Congestion Index: Global Snapshot, Jul 13 to Jul 26, 2026 (Tradlinx)
Storm tracks and intensities are as published on 31 July 2026 and will change. Congestion figures carry the following effective dates: Linerlytica global fleet anchorage share and the Shanghai and Ningbo vessel counts are as of 29 June 2026; Vizion arrival-to-berth and Hapag-Lloyd Gemini waiting times are as of 30 June 2026; the North Asia delayed-capacity estimate follows Bavi’s 11 July landfall; Kuehne+Nagel port readings cover 15 to 21 July and 22 to 28 July 2026; Tradlinx Port Congestion Index values cover the two weeks ending 26 July 2026 and reflect conditions before Typhoon Noul’s impact was recorded. Port status changes daily during typhoon season. Confirm current cut-offs, terminal appointments and vessel schedules against your carrier and terminal before acting on any figure here.
Need help interpreting this disruption or your shipment?
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