Althouse: "With sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph) and gusts as strong as 380 kph (235 mph), Haiyan may be the strongest tropical cyclone to hit land anywhere in recorded history."

November 8, 2013

"With sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph) and gusts as strong as 380 kph (235 mph), Haiyan may be the strongest tropical cyclone to hit land anywhere in recorded history."

In the Philippines.

27 comments:

RecChief said...: waiting for Al Gore to weigh in. should be only a couple of minutes.; 11/8/13, 10:50 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: Right through Cebu, my girlfriend's hometown.

Her family lives in middle class housing that is pretty solid. They'll probably be OK.

The shanty towns are going to be blown away. They are built out of cardboard and corrugated steel. I imagine the residents of the shanty towns took cover elsewhere.; 11/8/13, 10:55 AM
YoungHegelian said...: On the big islands of the Philippine "archipelago", it will be horrific enough. But the smaller eastern islands may simply be scoured of human habitation entirely.

Sustained 195 mph winds. Nothing stands up to sustained 195 mph winds and torrential rain.

We are looking at a huge humanitarian disaster.; 11/8/13, 10:56 AM
TMink said...: God bless and keep the people in the way. Let's open up our wallets and help folks.

Trey; 11/8/13, 10:57 AM
test said...: The shanty towns are going to be blown away. They are built out of cardboard and corrugated steel. I imagine the residents of the shanty towns took cover elsewhere.

There isn't enough safe housing to move that much of the population. The Phillipines is one of the worst places for something like this. People packed together, and poor in a way most Americans don't understand.; 11/8/13, 11:06 AM
rhhardin said...: It's entertainment.

Look what they got out of hurricane Sandy.; 11/8/13, 11:08 AM
MadisonMan said...: Not quite through Cebu, a little north of there, though this radar loop suggests plenty of torrential rain on Cebu. Tacloban was closer to the center of the storm, I imagine they had a huge storm surge in their harbor. Guiuan was probably obliterated.

Here's a loop of COMS-1 data: Link.; 11/8/13, 11:13 AM
Big Mike said...: Glad someone thought to qualify with "in recorded history."; 11/8/13, 11:19 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: According to the algore, we (or Filipinos) are being punished by an angry God for our sins.

Our turn is next. The end is nigh!

It's science!; 11/8/13, 11:20 AM
MadisonMan said...: Glad someone thought to qualify with "in recorded history."

True, though a tropical system stronger than this at landfall is difficult to fathom.

I'm very curious to see the post-storm analysis, especially for its minimum sea-level pressure.; 11/8/13, 11:30 AM
Big Mike said...: And then I followed the link and the lede sentence read "perhap the strongest storm ever." Does "ever" include the Jurassic? Because during the Triassic, back when I was in kindergarten, we had one heck of a storm hit eastern Pangaea that would have knocked out power for months, if only we'd had electric power back then.; 11/8/13, 11:34 AM
Moose said...: "Recorded history" being the key point.; 11/8/13, 11:39 AM
Kevin said...: Countdown until the warminists blame this on Man-made global warming, in three, two, one....

And that is being overly generous to those acolytes of the Religion of the Greens©.; 11/8/13, 11:41 AM
David said...: Strongest storm ever that they know about.

However described, it will be strong enough to create a disaster.; 11/8/13, 11:43 AM
KLDAVIS said...: Though, "recorded history," is not so long, as records only go back to 1978 when the Hall of Records was mysteriously blown away.; 11/8/13, 11:53 AM
Cedarford said...: Nature can really suck.; 11/8/13, 12:23 PM
Paco Wové said...: "especially for its minimum sea-level pressure"

Yes. I haven't been able to find any estimates of this. It will be interesting to see how it compares to Typhoon Tip.; 11/8/13, 12:38 PM
heyboom said...: My wife has extensive family in the Philippines that she stays in contact with through Facebook. Looking at her page, the reaction from there is way more subdued than the sensationalistic media. With only four reported deaths so far, I would say that this alleged strongest storm in recorded history had more bark than bite.; 11/8/13, 12:53 PM
Heartless Aztec said...: Surf's up somewhere in the Philippines. Pass the the food of the god's (lumpia please). And if needed help out with a Flip charity of your choice. They were always some of my best students....; 11/8/13, 1:21 PM
JHapp said...: What about Noah?; 11/8/13, 1:46 PM
Joe said...: The latest reports are that the winds were 146 mph at landfall. Still high, but not unprecedented and not the most powerful.; 11/8/13, 3:29 PM
MadisonMan said...: That is an interesting difference between the satellite-estimates and ground truth.; 11/8/13, 3:37 PM
Shouting Thomas said...: Yes, the word from family in Manila and Cebu is high winds and lots of rain, but few casualties.; 11/8/13, 3:51 PM
Chef Mojo said...: True, though a tropical system stronger than this at landfall is difficult to fathom.

Try Hurricane Camille, 1969. Estimated sustained winds at landfall were 200 mph. They don't know for sure, because the storm wiped out all the weather instruments. Think about that for a moment. They do have records of sustained winds of 190 mph.

It put my little town of Scottsville, Virginia, over 20 feet underwater, and killed 153 people around here and to the west of us. That's out of a total 259 for the entire storm, which tore ashore in Mississippi. That's after traveling over 900 miles inland. It's the reason Scottsville, on the James River, now has a levee surrounding the town, hydraulic flood gates and a pump station. We have flood drills every summer.

You want to talk about storms?; 11/8/13, 4:46 PM
MadisonMan said...: You want to talk about storms?

Okay. But I warn you, it'll be hard to shut me up once I get started.

We're at -- just about -- the hundredth anniversary of the storm on the Great Lakes -- it gave hurricane-force winds for more than a day to Lake Huron and killed more people than any other storm on the Lakes. A classic case of phasing - the northern storm was strong enough, causing wrecks on Lake Michigan and Superior, but a storm from south merged with that northern storm and moved due north from South Carolina to Lake Erie and then stalled. Lake Huron waves build rapidly, sinking many ore carriers. (This was only two years after the big storm of 11/11/1911 -- this storm allowed Oklahoma City to have both its record high and record low on one day!) Every year I look for a big storm around 11/11, but again this year I am denied.

FWIW, Yesterday the meteorologists at JTWC were considering Haiyan to be stronger than Camille at landfall. Lack of data from the Philippines yesterday, and poor satellite imagery in 1969, so no comparisons to Camille, were the culprit.

One thing that Haiyan probably beat Camille in was the coldness of its cloud tops. That was the amazing thing to watch in the satellite data -- how very very cold the clouds were (far colder than those for Andrew, for example).

I'll post more later if you want.; 11/8/13, 6:01 PM
Emil Blatz said...: Congrats!; 11/8/13, 9:18 PM
Big Mike said...: At 870 millibars when it made landfall, if that holds up, Haiyan probably does displace the Labor Day storm of 1935 (892). But not by much. It moves Camille (909) down to #3.

The "Big Blow" on the Great Lakes was 1913, not 1911, and top wind speeds were equivalent only (!?!) to a Category 2 hurricane.; 11/8/13, 9:51 PM