Typhoon Neoguri, a two category storm on a scale up to five, is expected to drop 40 mm (one and a half inches) to 90 mm of rain on Hainan and Guangdong and to bring winds of 176 kilometers (110 miles) per hour, the US Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.

Neoguri’s eyes, which is the second storm of the northwest Pacific cyclone season, was about 297 kilometers south-southwest of Hong Kong and about 113 kilometers east-southeast of Sanya on Hainan Island at 8 a.m. local time today, according to the Center’s latest announcement.

Fifty-six Chinese fishermen were still missing on Friday. Nobody knew anything about them since Thursday evening, when they had been seen near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

“Neoguri will be the earliest typhoon of the season to affect the south China region since the founding of new China in 1949,” Chen Lei, deputy commander of the State Headquarters of Flood Control and Drought Relief said, according to the same source.

“The heaviest downfall is expected to be 180 mm in southern Hainan,” Xinhua said.

Typhoons or cyclonic storms tend to form between May and November, the period known as the “typhoon season.” There is also a “hurricane season” for storms which form north of the equator.

Chinese scientists say that global warming causes typhoons, snow storms, floods and drought. On the other hand, some say these phenomena may be the consequences of a natural cycle.  Last month, while expecting to see the hurricane forecast for the 2008 season, William Gray, forecaster at Colorado State University said, talking about the hurricanes: “We don’t attribute this to anything humans are doing,” because these are “natural cycles.”

Meanwhile, the meteorology experts continue to predict strong storms with devastative effects.