HONOLULU– Residents of U.S. territories in the western Pacific were bracing Friday for a possible super typhoon, just months after the region was hit by Earth’s strongest tropical cyclone this year.

Power has yet to be fully restored to the US Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands after super typhoon, Sinlaku, brought fierce winds and incessant rain in April. Some people are still living in tents after their homes were destroyed.

“We’re getting ready to do this again,” said Edwin Propst, a former lawmaker who works in the governor’s office in Saipan, where he was already on Friday. “The moment is terrible.”

Typhoon Bavi was expected to become a super typhoon between Sunday night and early Monday, when it is forecast to reach the Marianas, said Paul Stanko, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Guam.

A cyclone becomes a super typhoon when it has maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 kph) or stronger. Super typhoons are equivalent to a high-level Category 4 or 5 storm, Stanko said.

Bavi was 760 miles (1,223 kilometers) east of Guam on Friday with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (129 kph), the weather service said.

Some residents hope Guam will take the brunt of Bavi to give their neighbors in the Northern Marianas a break as they slowly recover from Sinlaku, Stanko said.

“That’s what we really hope, because then Saipan wouldn’t suffer so much,” he said.

Propst was hearing the same thing from others on Guam.

“That’s so island style,” he said. “God bless you for saying that.”

Guam is located west of the International Date Line and is known as “where America’s day begins,” as it is hours ahead of Hawaii, Alaska, and the continental United States. It is home to two large US military bases.

Propst said residents covered their windows with plywood and stockpiled gasoline because there were long lines at gas stations for weeks after Sinlaku.

The Rev. Francis Hezel, assistant pastor at St. Barbara Catholic Church in Dededo, Guam, said he hopes no island will bear the brunt of the storm. But he said he was not too worried as he had been through numerous typhoons. I was hoping Bavi would change course.

“Right now the pattern is heading our way, but those patterns change,” he said.

Still, church workers and residents were preparing.

“This is becoming normal now: preparing for typhoons,” Hezel said. “It’s happening more frequently.”

El Niño increases the activity of the hurricane season in the Pacific. Experts say El Niño, a natural warming cycle, should further warm a planet already warming due to fossil fuel pollution and will likely accelerate extreme weather across the planet.

While Sinlaku caused no deaths on land, Propst said residents were still mourning the six crew members of a cargo ship that capsized during the typhoon. Searchers found one body, but the U.S. Coast Guard called off the more than 100-hour search before finding the rest.

Propst said that while much progress has been made in Sinlaku’s recovery, “we’re not there yet.”

“A few more months would have been good,” he said.