A Record Typhoon Season is Removing Capacity from China’s Biggest Ports

In the two weeks after Typhoon Dolphin hit the eastern coast of China, nearly 500,000 TEUs of container capacity came out of China’s top three ports. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd skipped calls at Shanghai, Ningbo, and Yantian to manage the congestion, and the fallout hit Asia-Latin America and Asia-Europe services hardest.

Commercial forecaster Tropical Storm Risk expects Northwest Pacific typhoon activity to run 60% above the historical average this year, calling it one of the most intense seasons on record. The driver is a super El Niño, the same phenomenon that is already impacting the Panama Canal. The storms caused by El Niño are expected to hit China, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, four of the most heavily trafficked origin markets in global trade.

What Typhoon Dolphin could cost shippers

Most of that lost capacity traces back to Shanghai, where two services alone accounted for more than half the total. Not all carriers are reported, so this breakdown is somewhat understated to the actual total.

Vessels waiting off the Port of Shanghai increased from 24 to 139 in two weeks, a nearly two-year high. Ningbo's queue rose from 11 ships to 77 over the same stretch. Hapag-Lloyd put average wait times at five to six days for Gemini services calling Shanghai's Yangshan terminal. HMM, Evergreen, and Ocean Network Express reported separate berthing delays running as long as nine days. Plus, some carriers are still rolling Shanghai cargo two weeks out, and forwarders on the ground are describing "volatile vessel schedules" as the new normal for cargo planning.

Three things importers can do to prepare

Build slack into your booking calendar and evaluate shipments in the pipeline for urgency to consider expedited solutions. If your plans assume every sailing goes out on schedule, a single blanked departure can cascade into missed delivery windows.

Diversify your port and carrier mix where you can. Concentration on one gateway or one string looks efficient until that gateway is the one skipping calls.

Get visibility further upstream. The shippers who felt Typhoon Dolphin the least were the ones who knew about capacity cuts before their cargo did, not after a booking confirmation changed under them.

And importantly: plan for a prolonged peak environment: space will remain tight and rate reductions will be slower than expected ahead of Golden Week. Although demand on Asia-to-North America and Europe trade lanes is softening, the compounding effects of recent typhoons and Panama Canal bottlenecks continue to disrupt schedules, keeping vessel utilization high. With carriers implementing blank sailings, suppliers must adapt to ongoing operational friction and lead-time volatility.

Plan for the season

Typhoon Dolphin is one data point in a season forecast to deliver a lot more of them. Flexport works with shippers across 135 countries to build the kind of routing flexibility and real-time visibility that turns a disrupted season into a manageable one, so a blanked sailing is a problem you saw coming, not one you're finding out about from a schedule change email.
If your Q4 plan doesn't already account for an above-average typhoon season, now's the time to build that in.

Sources: Bloomberg, "Typhoon Season Forecast to Be Among Most Intense Ever for Asia," Aug. 10, 2026 (accessed via public preview only); Keith Wallis, "Shippers suffer big capacity loss as carriers skip key Chinese ports post-storm," Journal of Commerce / S&P Global, Aug. 21, 2026 (full article, via uploaded PDF)