In mid-April 2026, Super Typhoon Sinlaku churned across the North Pacific Ocean and brought heavy rain and flooding to the Mariana Islands. The storm reached "violent typhoon" status--the highest intensity on the scale used by the Japan Meteorological Agency and roughly equivalent to a category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale. Sinlaku was one of only a handful of tropical cyclones of that intensity known to have occurred so early in the year in the region, meteorologists noted.
