Living up to its name, Typhoon Lupit — meaning cruel in Filipino — zigzagged around the rain-soaked northern Philippines on Friday, keeping weary residents on edge and forecasters guessing about its next move.

This image provided by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory shows Typhoon Lupit threatening the Filipino coast as early as Monday. (Associated Press)

The third successive storm in a month has been hovering for several days near the coast and inland mountains, sending thousands to seek shelter following two back-to-back typhoons that killed nearly 1,000 people, most of them buried in dozens of mudslides.

Lupit's erratic direction has frustrated local officials and media who kept predicting its landfall every day. As recently as Thursday evening, the weather bureau said in a nationally televised briefing that Lupit would ram into northeastern Cagayan province early Friday.

But after crawling for the last two days, it stalled again Friday, delaying landfall by another day — or two, or three, chief forecaster Nathaniel Cruz now says.

As of 8 a.m. ET Friday, the storm had yet to make landfall but remained just offshore.

Earlier this week, a 20-metre high seawall in San Antonio village collapsed. Sporadic flooding and power outages have been reported on Friday. Best estimates are now predicting landfall some time Saturday morning.

High pressure systems alter path

Lupit has moved erratically because of two high-pressure fronts sandwiching the storm from the South China Sea in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east, each pulling the storm in its direction, Cruz said.

Typhoons usually slice through the northern Philippines from the Pacific and exit through the South China Sea. The archipelago nation, known as the welcome mat for typhoons, gets about 20 a year during the rainy season from June to December.

Lupit weakened Thursday night but was still packing winds of 120 km/h and gusts of up to 150 km/h, Cruz said. It was still a dangerous system that could drench the north of the main island of Luzon on the heels of the worst flooding in the Philippines in 40 years.

Tropical storm Ketsana on Sept. 26 inundated much of the capital, Manila, and surrounding areas, including the country's largest Lake Laguna, killing 464 people. It was followed by Typhoon Parma, which unleashed mudslides along the Cordillera mountain range Oct. 3, leaving 465 dead.

For the past week, army troops and disaster-relief officials have ferried tonnes of canned food and clothes and moved rubber boats and helicopters along the coast and the interior.

At least 1,500 residents living along the Cagayan River and its tributaries were moved to high ground, said provincial Gov. Alvaro Antonio. Another 1,000 people left their homes in Appari township.

With files from The Associated Press