Super Typhoon Megi
Posted October 19, 2010
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On October 18, 2010, Typhoon Megi approached and made landfall in the northeastern Isabela Province of the Philippines. Spanning more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) across, Megi was the 15th tropical storm and 7th typhoon of the season in the western Pacific Ocean. It was the most intense tropical cyclone of the year to date.
This image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite at 10:35 a.m. Philippine Time (02:35 UTC) on October 18, 2010. Megi was bearing down on Palanan Bay as a “super typhoon” with category 5 strength on the Saffir Simpson scale. As of 8:00 a.m. local time, the storm had sustained winds of 268 kilometers (167 miles) per hour, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
The storm had grown to “super” typhoon status on October 16, and wind speeds peaked at an estimated 287 kilometers (178 miles) per hour while the storm was still over the Pacific Ocean on October 17. Megi began to downgrade as it moved onshore around 11:30 a.m. on October 18 and then crossed over the Sierra Madre mountain range (average elevation 1,800 meters, or 5,900 feet).
News reports indicated at least one death and an unknown number of injuries, as power and communications was cut off to more than 90 percent of Isabela and Cagayan provinces. In addition to the immediate damage, officials were concerned about the long-term damage to the rice crop, a staple of the national diet.
Must be global warming!
Magi may not be related to climate change, but it sure produced a terrain change.
Sheesh, 178mph. I hope the loss of life and infrastructure damage isn’t too catastrophic for the people over there.
at least Gore won’t have to photoshop his next book
Is it pronounced with a soft or hard G (Magi – like the wise men of the biblical story or Magee – like the Rod Steward song)?
Having lived in Quezon City for a couple of years, I will say that each of these large typhoons wreaks frightful damage on the infrastructure and housing. Recovery is slow and painful for the population.
I have some unique memories of the “super typhoons” of the Pacific. In 1960 and 1961, I lived in Taiwan, and during an 18 month stay there, I recall 9 typhoons making landfall, and three of them were “super typhoons.” But we didn’t have “global warming” back then to blame them on.
We were just reading at :
http://daltonsminima.altervista.org/?page_id=9506#comment-32453
Were the regular “Michelle” was referring:
….were already lined up the Moon, Venus and the Sun and the Earth director lapped in its slice of East Asia.
Atmosphere tides?
My bosses family is getting some nastiness, but once again the brunt of the brute went north of them, YAY!
Difficult to imagine if you haven’t been in one but this might help;
http://www.slushpupie.com/media/images/beaufort_scale.jpg
And remember, force increases to v^2.
The “Read the rest at NASA here” link doesn’t seem to be working.
During tonight’s lecture by Pres. Vaclav Klaus at the GWPF in London, somebody (Corbyn?) asked why didn’t the UN invest much into helping people avoid the absurdly repeating situation where “each of these large typhoons wreaks frightful damage on the infrastructure and housing” and “recovery is slow and painful for the population“.
Enneagram says:
October 19, 2010 at 1:44 pm
We were just reading at :
http://daltonsminima.altervista.org/?page_id=9506#comment-32453
Were the regular “Michelle” was referring:
….were already lined up the Moon, Venus and the Sun and the Earth director lapped in its slice of East Asia.
Atmosphere tides?
I prefer a “good fight” with Tamino.
PS: Without the presence of Jupiter and Saturn. Something wrong.
The typhoon season this year seems quite slow vs last year, maybe this is a factor in the super typhoon? Same total energy released, but with fewer storms?
My cousin was on a SeaBee supply ship when one of those hit Subic. Not fun at all..
ctm, thanks for your work here.
So far, 12 people killed here. This casualty figure is relatively “small” considering the force of the typhoon, where many roads were not passable because of so many fallen trees, houses and electrical posts. Metro Manil and surrounding provinces remain dark and cloudy today even if the typhoon has already left.
Having lived in & travelled all over the Philippines, sailed the Philippine & S. China Seas repeatedly, and recently done missionary work there, I can assure you that so-called super-typhoons are no new event connected to the mythological global warming crisis invented by numerous so-called scientists to get grants fm gov’t environmental agencies & environmental foundations. Most remarkable & highly commendable is the courageous & resilient strength of poor Pinoy & Pinay as they deal repeatedly with the results of these enormously powerful & totally natural weather events. I can’t wait to go back & help them & may God Bless Them in this time of trial!
“Basil says:
October 19, 2010 at 1:35 pm
I have some unique memories of the “super typhoons” of the Pacific. In 1960 and 1961, I lived in Taiwan, and during an 18 month stay there, I recall 9 typhoons making landfall, and three of them were “super typhoons.” But we didn’t have “global warming” back then to blame them on.”
Interesting to hear of so many super typhoons back in the 60s which is generally accepted to have been a cooler spell and I’ve pointed out elsewhere that the jets were more equatorward then too.
So most likely such typhoons are a confirmation that we in the early stages of a cooling troposphere where polar air is encroaching more equatorward and preventing poleward movement of such typhoons so that they remain in situ over warm water for longer and grow larger than otherwise would have been the case.
So a warming troposphere gives smaller faster moving and maybe more locally intense typhoons but a cooling troposphere produces larger, slower moving typhoons, maybe on average a little less intense in individual locations but covering a much larger area.
I’d say “magi” (as in “Gift of the…”) is mostly mispronounced by Westerners. The origin is from “magus”, which would be a hard “g”. I would pronounce such a thing as “mah-gee” with the accent on the second syllable.
Jeff – I am one of those westerners, and that is why I was asking. I appreciate the input. Thanks
By comparison, the hypothetical Hypercane, or perhaps ‘Hyperphoon,’ would have wind speeds of over 800 km/h (500 mph) and would also have a central pressure of less than 70 kilopascals (21 in Hg). As far as I know, this is only a conjecture if ocean temperatures ever warmed to around 50 °C (122 °F,) and there is no evidence that any such storm has ever formed in the past.
The Dawn of the Hypercane?
By Stephen Leahy
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30308
@ Steven Wilde.
Wow, this is an interesting hypothesis. Living in the Philippines, I observed the center of the storm very carefully. It wasn’t a particularly wet storm although it lingered a bit longer over Luzon, taking a wee bit of a more Southern path than expected, regaining strength quickly as it entered the South China Sea where it started to push rain bands to Metro Manila which remained rather dry during the traversal over the Cordilleras. The point is that the water temperature (SST) Northwest of Luzon was at 30° because of well below average rains so far. Now, as soon as the storm finally started to speed up again towards the North (South China), the regained Cat 4 storm was quickly downgraded and has just reached Cat 1 now, much on the lower side of all forcasts.
Correction: Cat 1 referred to the 24 h forcast at the time I wrote the above comment. In fact, the storm had Cat 2 at that time. Apologies. This storm is amazing. It just reintensified into Cat 3 as of 12 p.m. local time (UTC+8) according to the estimated windspeeds of Michael Padua at http://www.typhoon2000.ph based and on the latest JTWC report (max. sustained 1-min winds of 195 kph (up from 165 kph).