Kent then rapidly strengthened into a super typhoon with winds reaching peak intensity of 150 mph (240 km/h) as it brushed past the northern Philippines and southern Taiwan before making landfall in eastern People's Republic of China on August 31.

24 hours later while northwest of Palau, the disturbance intensified to be classified as a tropical depression by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center on August 25.

[1] Moving northwest, the depression continue to organize and forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center began to issue a tropical cyclone formation alert (TCFA) on the disturbance at 1130 UTC.

As the storm strengthened, a banding type eye appeared as Kent reached maximum intensity of 150 mph (240 km/h) on August 29 which is Supertyphoon status by JTWC classifications and equivent to a strong Category 4 tropical cyclone on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale.

[5] In Hong Kong, forecasters at the Royal Observatory issued a Stand by signal number one on August 30 and advised residents to take shelter as Kent neared the coast.

[4] The centre of Typhoon Kent brushed past the island of Batan where a weather station reported a barometric pressure of 945 millibars and 1 minute sustained winds of 135 mph (217 km/h).

In Luzon the typhoon inflicted the most damage as heavy rainfall caused severe flash flooding that forced 65,000 people to evacuate.

In Guangdong, flood waters damaged or destroyed 40,000 homes, inundated 3,000 km2 (1,200 sq mi) of farmland[4] and left 30 people dead.