A powerful typhoon ploughed into a densely populated area of south China on Wednesday, killing three people and triggering a "once-in-a-century storm tide" in several cities, state media said. Authorities evacuated more than 100,000 people before typhoon Hagupit made landfall in far south China around dawn. But three still lost their lives in the crowded, heavily commercial province of Guangdong, with another two missing, reported the website of the official People's Daily (www.people.com.cn). It did not say how they died. "There have been no reports of major hazards or mass death or injury," the report added. Chinese authorities also helped 225 fishermen back into shore, it said. The storm killed at least eight people in the Philippines earlier in the week. Streets were deserted and shops and businesses shuttered as the storm uprooted trees and brought down billboards in cities across Guangdong, including Maoming where the centre of the storm made landfall. The state news agency Xinhua described typhoon Hagupit as "the worst to hit Guangdong in more than a decade", but it was not clear by what gauge it was measuring the storm considering typhoons in the past have triggered heavy death tolls. High winds destroyed a petrol station along the Zhanjiang section of State Highway 325 and a factory under construction. After the worst of the weather, authorities also scrambled to bolster dams and dyke walls. Hagupit triggered a once-in-a-century storm tide -- a high flood period in which water levels can rise to more than 5 metres (yards) above the normal tide -- in several coastal cities including Foshan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen and Yangjiang. "The water level at Dashi hydrological station in the provincial capital Guangzhou was 2.73 metres, a 100-year record, and it showed no sign of subsiding by midday," Xinhua said. Hagupit whipped past Hong Kong overnight, uprooting trees and causing flash floods in low-lying areas including Lantau island where the city's airport is located, with dozens of people injured across the territory. Tropical storms in the region gather intensity from the warm ocean waters and frequently develop into typhoons that hit Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and southern China during a season that lasts from early summer to late autumn. Another storm was brewing to the east of the Philippines. Tropical Storm Risk said the storm, named "nineteen", was expected to strengthen and head west towards China, following a similar path to Hagupit which was headed into north Vietnam. (Reporting by James Pomfret and Joseph Chaney in Hong Kong, Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi, Manny Mogato in Manila and Chris Buckley and Yu Le in Beijing; Editing by Jerry Norton) Story by James Pomfret