Forecasters said Lupit - the Filipino word for cruel- had intensified overnight into a typhoon and by late afternoon Saturday was packing 87 mile per hour (140 kilometer per hour) winds and gusts of up to 106 mph (170 kph).
The Philippines is still recovering from Tropical Storm Ketsana in late September, which triggered the worst flooding in Manila in over 40 years, and the Oct. 3 landfall of Typhoon Parma, which lingered for a week while drenching the main island of Luzon. The two storms killed 773 people and affected more than 7 million.
The latest typhoon could spare the saturated northern Philippines and veer north toward Taiwan early next week, or it could track the same devastating path as Parma, chief government forecaster Nathaniel Cruz said.
He said Lupit was slowing down over the sea east of Luzon, where it could further gain strength. It was about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) east of Manila at 4 p.m. (0800 GMT, 4 a.m. EDT) Saturday.
In northern Benguet province, where at least 288 were killed in Parma-triggered landslides, police officers were going house-to-house to tell people to leave the affected communities before the latest storm, Gov. Nestor Fongwan said.
"Definitely, they must go," Fongwan told The Associated Press. The communities are about 130 miles (210 kilometers) north of the capital, Manila.
Other Benguet communities identified as hazardous also were ordered evacuated, Fongwan said.
Disaster officers urged local officials to tell residents to immediately evacuate at the first sign of landslides, Cordillera regional civil defense chief Olive Luces said.
