Article:
Signs Of The
Last Times
Super Typhoon Halong is raging in the open waters of the western tropical Pacific Ocean right now, with satellite imagery estimating its peak winds at close to 190 mph. It’s every bit a Category 5 storm and then some, its extreme strength coming three days after it drifted lazily as a tropical depression. Halong isn’t moving toward land, but its mesmerizing fury and terrifying beauty is capturing the attention of meteorologists worldwide.
Halong got its act together gradually, ramping up into a Category 2 hurricane by Monday. That’s when the storm rapidly intensified overnight into a Category 5-equivalent buzz saw. As of noon Tuesday, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated Halong’s intensity at 160 mph. But there are plenty of reasons to believe that may be conservative and that Halong is still intensifying. “The latest automated values from [the Advanced Dvorak Technique] have it up to ~165 knots!" wrote Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, or 190 mph. Hurricane Dorian, which ravaged the Bahamas in September, had maximum winds of 185 mph.
Klotzbach referred to the Advanced Dvorak Technique, a means to assign storm intensity remotely using just satellite observations. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center does not dispatch aircraft into typhoons. This could put Halong into the top dozen or so tropical cyclones ever observed by weather satellite, based on values churned out by the Dvorak method. The “satellite era” dates back to 1979. The terrifying shots from above show extremely cold, high cloud tops raging about an ominous, warm eye.
It’s been a busy year for typhoons in the western Pacific. Barely a month ago, Hagibis leaped from a tropical storm to a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon in 18 hours, intensifying at one of the fastest rates ever recorded.
Hagibis socked Japan thereafter as a Category 1 or 2 equivalent but unloaded torrents of rainfall. More than three feet fell on Hakone in Kanagowa prefecture in 24 hours, the widespread flooding wreaking havoc across Japan.In February, another super typhoon reached Category 5 status. The storm, named Wutip, sideswiped Guam, bringing more than 4.2 inches of rain to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport on Feb. 23. Farther to the island’s south, flash flooding struck Inarajan, which recorded a whopping 16.9 inches. Three Category 5′s in the western Pacific may sound bad, but it can be far worse; nine of them had spun up by this point in the year back in 1997.
Halong is the seventh super typhoon in the western Pacific this year, as well as the 13th typhoon. There have been 29 named storms. Halong is forecast to remain entirely out to sea and begin to weaken some in the next three days or so. In the meantime, though, waves near the storm’s center will top 30 to 40 feet.
