A ‘super typhoon’ just devastated the Mariana Islands — months before peak storm season

The strongest storm of 2026 slammed into the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands this week, where it flooded homes, ripped roofs off of houses, and lingered for more than two days, forcing families to shelter without electricity, cell service, or running water as they waited for the worst to pass.

Super Typhoon Sinlaku formed southeast of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, and Guam, two U.S. territories that make up the Mariana Islands archipelago in the western Pacific, and rapidly grew to a Category 5, 185-mph monstrosity. First, the storm hit Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia, where it left one person dead and one fisherman missing at sea. It then passed north of Guam, which suffered flooding from tropical storm winds, before hitting the islands of Saipan and Tinian in the CNMI, following a similar path as Super Typhoon Yutu eight years ago, which destroyed thousands of homes and forced children to go to school in tents.

Destructive storms are familiar to the Northern Mariana Islands, which is home to about 50,000 people, including Indigenous Chamorros and Carolinians. But this typhoon felt different. “It’s still whistling and you can still hear it going on and things are banging outside,” said Ed Propst, a Chamorro resident and former commonwealth legislator, when reached in his home on Saipan Thursday morning. “I’ve never seen anything like this, where a typhoon just doesn’t seem to leave.” The storm also hit in April, at least two months before typhoon season usually starts. “When was the last time we had a super typhoon hitting us this early in the year?” Propst said. “This is the first that I can recall.” 

The super typhoon comes at a critical time for the U.S. territory: It has struggled to get federal help to address a yearslong economic downturn, and is still recovering and rebuilding from Super Typhoon Yutu. The storm also comes amidst a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees federal disaster relief, and longstanding efforts by the Trump administration to slash disaster preparedness and climate change mitigation programs.  

“We are taking a devastating hit from Super Typhoon Sinlaku, compounding the urgent local priorities we already face, from coastal erosion to an economic crisis,” said Sheila Babauta, a Chamorro climate justice advocate on Saipan and a fellow with the nonprofit Right to Democracy, who sheltered from the storm with her two-month-old. “On top of that, we’re constantly fighting ecological threats from the federal government, like deep-sea mining and militarization. Our community is strong, but even warriors need rest.” 

Scientists say that Super Typhoon Sinlaku might have existed regardless of climate change, but warming seas increased the odds of it happening and the likelihood it would intensify quickly. “In the days leading up to the development of this supertyphoon, ocean surface temperatures in the region were as high as 3-5 degrees Fahrenheit above the recent average (which is already warmer than much of the 20th century),” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources, in an email. “Because warm tropical oceans are ‘hurricane fuel,’ the current supertyphoon has rapidly intensified in a favorable environment that is at least partly linked to climate change via warming oceans.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, approved disaster relief for the archipelago ahead of the storm, and said it has 90 personnel in place in Guam and the CNMI to help. “FEMA’s distribution center in Guam is stocked with approximately 1.1 million liters of water, 723,000 meals, 5,300 cots, 3,600 blankets, 4,400 tarps, and 78 generators, which can be used if needed,” the spokesperson told Grist, adding that 42 generators are already on their way to Saipan. But the agency said a stalemate in Congress over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, due in part to Democrats’ concerns over Trump’s immigration crackdown, could harm the availability of disaster relief funds. FEMA is located within Homeland Security. “We urge Democrats in Congress to stop playing games and restore DHS’s funding before American communities suffer the next disaster ALONE,” a spokesperson for FEMA said. 

Adi Martínez Román, co-director of the nonprofit Right to Democracy that advocates for U.S. territories, is more concerned about Trump’s more permanent reshaping of disaster relief and climate change mitigation programs. For more than a year, the administration has been slashing FEMA staff, reducing support for hazard mitigation, and removing references to climate change across the federal government. Román is glad that FEMA disaster aid has been approved for Sinlaku but wonders what resources will ultimately be available for long-term recovery. “That’s a very big question,” she said. 

During the storm, Congresswoman Kimberlyn King-Hinds, the commonwealth’s only representative on Capitol Hill, posted a Facebook video assuring residents that she’s working with federal partners to get the help they need. “At this stage, funding issues have not been raised by FEMA or any other federal agency in our communications,” King-Hinds’ spokesperson Chris Conception told Grist. “However, we remain mindful that the CNMI relies heavily on timely federal support following major disasters, and any constraints on resources could affect the speed and scope of recovery, particularly in remote and infrastructure-constrained communities like ours.”

Before the storm, King-Hinds was among the commonwealth’s top political leaders who pleaded with the Trump administration for federal help to address the islands’ massive economic downturn. The islands are disproportionately dependent on tourism, and arrivals are down more than half of what they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing businesses to close and driving outmigration. King-Hinds and the CNMI have asked the Trump administration for specific policy changes to help bring in more tourists, including loosening flight restrictions from China and visa restrictions from the Philippines, as well as a federal bailout. But Trump officials have so far been noncommittal. 

Román, who is from Puerto Rico, said U.S. territories’ status as effectively modern-day colonies makes it exceedingly hard to sway federal policies. Residents of the CNMI and other U.S. territories cannot vote for president. They don’t have any voice in the U.S. Senate. Their delegates to the House of Representatives, like King-Hinds, may argue their cases, but are ultimately also non-voting. “It is so difficult for us to have agency in federal policies,” Román said. “Programs are built responding to constituencies, and we are not considered a constituency.” 

That disparity is increasingly problematic as residents of U.S. territories deal with the worsening effects of climate change — not only more intense storms, but also rising seas, coral bleaching, worsening heat-related illnesses, more limited freshwater, and other impacts. Propst from Saipan said that one challenge that the territories often must overcome is educating far-away federal officials about who they are and the realities that residents are living with. “They’re thousands and thousands of miles away, just totally unplugged and clueless as to our real economic challenges,” he said. 

Propst is no longer a sitting legislator, but he is still getting lots of messages from his former constituents braving Sinlaku: A mother who is trapped in her house and needs baby formula, a friend who lost all but two of his solar panels, a colleague whose property now looks like a lake. Whether or not federal funding materializes, Propst knows his neighbors will help those in need. “We’ve been through this before, and we know what it takes to get through it again,” he said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A ‘super typhoon’ just devastated the Mariana Islands — months before peak storm season on Apr 16, 2026.