AFTER HAIYAN NOT SURPRISING
The thirtieth named storm of the 2013 Pacific typhoon season, Haiyan originated from an area of low pressure several hundred kilometers east-southeast of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia on November 2, 2013. Tracking generally westward, environmental conditions favored tropical cyclogenesis and the system developed into a tropical depression the following day.
After becoming a tropical storm and attaining the name Haiyan at 0000 UTC on November 4, the system began a period of rapid intensification that brought it to typhoon intensity by 1800 UTC on November 5.
By November 6, the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC) assessed the system as a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale; the storm passed over the island of Kayangel in Palau shortly after attaining this strength.
It is the deadliest Philippine typhoon on record, killing at least 6,300 people in that country alone.
Haiyan is also the strongest storm recorded at landfall, and unofficially the strongest typhoon ever recorded in terms of wind speed. As of January 2014, bodies were still being found.
At 1200 UTC on November 7, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) upgraded the storm's maximum ten-minute sustained winds to 230 km/h (145 mph), the highest in relation to the cyclone.
The Hong Kong Observatory put the storm's maximum ten-minute sustained winds at 275 km/h (170 mph) prior to landfall in the central Philippines, while the China Meteorological Administration estimated the maximum two-minute sustained winds at the time to be around 78 m/s (280 km/h or 175 mph).
At 1800 UTC, the JTWC estimated the system's one-minute sustained winds to 315 km/h (195 mph), unofficially making Haiyan the strongest tropical cyclone ever observed based on wind speed.
After The Storm: Tacloban in Philippines
VIDEO: VISIONS OF HELL: THE HOWLING HAIYAN
No comments:
Post a Comment