Typhoon Bopha hits the Philippines at Cat 5 strength; at least 40 killed
Typhoon Bopha slammed ashore on the Philippine island of Mindanao at 4:45 am local time on Tuesday morning as a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds. Bopha is the third Category 5 typhoon to affect the Western Pacific this year, and the strongest typhoon ever recorded to hit Mindanao, which rarely sees strong typhoons due to its position close to the Equator. The death toll from the powerful storm already stands at 40, and is expected to rise. While passage over land has weakened Bopha to a Category 2 storm, the tropical cyclone is spreading torrential rains over a large portion of the southern Philippine Islands, and this will cause serious flooding problems today. The island of Mindanao is highly vulnerable to flood disasters from tropical cyclones; last year's Tropical Storm Washi, which hit Mindanao on December 16, 2011 with 60 mph winds and torrential rains, killed over 1500 people. Before hitting the Philippines, Typhoon Bopha brought a storm surge estimated at ten feet to the island nation of Palau, where near-total destruction is being reported in some coastal areas.
Figure 1. Super Typhoon Bopha as seen from the International Space Station on December 2, 2012. At the time, Bopha had top sustained winds of 150 - 155 mph. Image credit: NASA.
Bopha: the 2nd most southerly Category 5 typhoon on record
Bopha, a Cambodian word for flower or a girl, became a tropical depression unusually close to the Equator, at 3.6°N latitude. Tropical cyclones rarely form so close to the Equator, because they cannot leverage the Earth's rotation to get themselves spinning. Bopha became the second most southerly Category 5 typhoon on Monday at 7.4°N latitude. The record is held by Typhoon Louise of 1964, which was a Category 5 storm at 7.3°N.
Video 1. Scenes of wind damage and flooding from Typhoon Bopha's landfall in the Philippines yesterday.
Jeff Masters
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GOES East caught a little something extra today on visible...
That picture is edited, here's the actual picture they don't want you to see. ;)
Taken 21:15UTC, GOES-E CONUS view.
What do you guys think.. UFO?
I see a wig and a weird face...
Nah, it used to be Grothar's residence, they threw him out though.. down actually, into a reactor core.
I kid, I kid ;)
But yea, GOES-E often catches the Moon like that, saw it earlier before. What would be great if GOES-14 could get a shot like that, you can see the craters in detail even.
Well.... that's no moon...
...it's a space station!
Looks like a death star under construction...
Just over 16 days so this kinda makes sense.
Or is it?? Just a little displaced.
Stay on targ...I mean topic!
yes...very likely to happen...
Tropical Cyclone Bulletin #12
TYPHOON PABLO (BOPHA)
11:00 AM PhST December 5 2012
==============================
Typhoon "PABLO" has slowed down and weakened slightly and is now over northern Palawan.
At 10:00 AM PhST, Typhoon Pablo [976 hPa] located at 10.7°N 119.4°E or 120 km northeast of Puerto Princesa City has 10 minute sustained winds of 65 knots gusting up to 80 knots. The cyclone is reported as moving northwest at 9 knots.
Signal Warnings
==============
Signal Warning #3
-----------
Luzon Region
-----------
1. Northern Palawan
2. Calamian Grp. of Islands
Signal Warning #2
-----------
Luzon Region
-----------
1. Rest of Palawan
Visayas Region
---------------
1. Rest of Palawan
Signal Warning #1
----------
Luzon Region
-------------
1. Orriental Mindoro
2. Occidental Mindoro
3. Lubang Is.
Visayas Region
=============
1. Antique
Additional Information
========================
Public Storm Warning Signals elsewhere are now lowered.
Estimated rainfall amount is from 10-18 mm per hour (heavy to intense) within the 400 km diameter of the typhoon.
Residents living in low lying and mountainous areas under public storm warning signals are alerted against possible flash floods and landslides. Likewise, those living in coastal areas under public storm warning signal #3 and signal #2 are alerted against big waves or storm surges generated by this typhoon.
Fishing boats and other sea vessels are advised not to venture out into the Seaboards of Luzon and Western Visayas.
The public and the disaster coordinating councils concerned are advised to take appropriate actions and watch for the next bulletin to be issued at 5 pm today.
Imagine global cooling anyway. That would be something. Cities smashing all time records for their coolest summer on record, ridiculously intense cold waves, plethoras of snowy winters. Blah, maybe GW isn't that bad, LOL. And I could only imagine what that would do to hurricane season.
Oh and does anybody know how high the gauge read during the peak of Sandy at Sandy Hook? Given the geography and the angle of approach, it would be reasonable to assume that Sandy Hook was swallowed by storm surge.
Link
Sandy Hook did get a bit of surge. Lot of houses wiped off it. The twin light house looked fine. You can go here & zoom in on it to see the damage right after from aerial photos for Sandy Hook or really anywhere kind of coastal affected by Sandy. Pretty easy to see where the surge & houses was..
From Dr. Masters bog of 11/07:
Figure 2. Predicted storm surge at Sandy Hook, NJ, for Winter Storm Athena, from the experimental Extratropical Storm Surge model, run by NOAA's Meteorological Development Laboratory. This model used winds from this morning's 6Z (1 am EDT) run of the GFS model. The peak storm surge (yellowish-brown line) is predicted to be 3.4', occurring Wednesday evening. High tide (green line) occurs near 1 pm Wednesday afternoon, resulting in a peak storm tide of approximately 7.2' around 1 pm Wednesday (black line). For comparison, Sandy delivered a 8.6' storm surge to Sandy Hook before their tide gauge failed, with the storm tide reaching 13.2' above MLLW (Mean Lower Low Water.)
Ernesto. Drove the blog crazy with everyone saying an eye was forming when it wasn't. Had a lot of fun before I made an account watching that.
Mark my words!!! If the city maintains these violations, then there will be massive demonstrations from numerous folks sticking up for their rights!!!
em>The Philippines military says the death toll from Typhoon Bopha has risen to at least 94, with fears held for hundreds of missing villagers.
That’s the prediction of one University of Iowa researcher and his colleague as published in an early online release in the prestigious Journal of Climate, the official publication of the American Meteorological Society.
The study is a compilation of results from some of the best available computer models of climate, according to lead author Gabriele Villarini, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and assistant research engineer at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering, and his colleague Gabriel Vecchi of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton, N.J.
“We wanted to conduct the study because intense tropical cyclones can harm people and property,” Villarini says. “The adverse and long-lasting influence of such storms recently was demonstrated by the damage Hurricane Sandy created along the East Coast.”
The study itself examines projected changes in the North Atlantic Power Dissipation Index (PDI) using output from 17 state-of-the-art global climate models and three different potential scenarios. The PDI is an index that integrates storm intensity, duration, and frequency.
“We found that the PDI is projected to increase in the 21st century in response to both greenhouse gas increases and reductions in particulate pollution over the Atlantic over the current century. By relating these results to other findings in a paper we published May 13, 2012 in the journal Nature Climate Change, we found that, while the number of storms is not projected to increase, their intensity is,” he says.
“Moreover, our results indicate that as more carbon dioxide is emitted, the stronger the storms get, while scenarios with the most aggressive carbon dioxide mitigation show the smallest increase in intensity,” he says.
The complete manuscript, “Projected Increases in North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Intensity from CMIP5 Models,” can be viewed at: journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-004 41.1.
The study was funded in part by the Iowa Flood Center.
Prolonged changes in extreme weather associated with climate cycles tend to manifest primarily as a result of an increase/decrease in planetary energy, which is directly related to temperature alterations. The change in the climate is a direct result of the warming, just as it was due to cooling following the eruption of Mount Tambora (in conjunction with the solar minimum) in 1816.
That's what they want you to think. >:)
But yes, it's Mimas, the twentieth-largest moon in our solar system and a companion to Saturn.
Hurricanes can happen at anytime but there is certainly a period of heightened activity. Otherwise we wouldn't have a hurricane season in the first place.
A cloud waterfall?
In the way of what?
Here.
Sure. I did. lol
Thanks for finding that. Using Power Dissipation Index (PDI), makes alot of sense. People are saying where are the cat 5s slamming shore? Here in reality we are having abnormally huge storms.. Nice to see aerosols being factored in too.
MORE THAN 200 DEAD IN PHILIPPINE TYPHOON
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