Super Typhoon Haiyan

[gabba]

Not quite in our immediate area but worthy of note, Super Typhoon Haiyan is set to have a significant impact on the Phillipines over the next few days.

Noted as one of the biggest (if not the biggest) cyclone ever recorded, winds of 195 miles per hour are predicted. Further information  posted below:

News Update:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9378143/Thousands-flee-as-monster-typhoon-hits
http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/tropical-storm-typhoon-haiyan-threatens-manila-philippines-20131104?hootPostID=95dd34b9ba5e2aa0e896237f8424b64c

Comparison with Hurricane Katrina
https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/398613544586846208/photo/1

Image:

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[ato2]

Some of the wind speed figures I have seen quoted: 315km/hr and gusts of 379km/hr are truly frightening

[gabba]

News starting to come in now of the devastation wreaked by typhoon haiyan, as it crosses the Philippines

Over 100 dead in Tacloban which bore the full force of the typhoon as it came ashore
www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9382730/Typhoon-Haiyan-kills-at-least-100
 
The typhoon is predicted to move out to the west of the Philippines and perhaps gain further strength before hitting Vietnam or China in the next day or so.

[gabba]

Weather channel reporting winds of 194 mph as the typhoon hit the Philippines. This is equivalent in strength to an ef4 tornado.

 There is concern that over the next day or so that the typhoon will move up over the coast of Vietnam into a large low lying and heavily populated area that is vulnerable to storm surges.

[gabba]

Feedback from a couple of stormchasers posting as iCyclone on Facebook. They were staying in a concrete hotel 2 blocks from the sea.....

First off, Tacloban City is devastated. The city is a horrid landscape of smashed buildings and completely defoliated trees, with widespread looting and unclaimed bodies decaying in the open air. The typhoon moved fast and didn't last long-- only a few hours-- but it struck the city with absolutely terrifying ferocity. At the height of the storm, as the wind rose to a scream, as windows exploded and as our solid-concrete downtown hotel trembled from the impact of flying debris, as pictures blew off the walls and as children became hysterical, a tremendous storm surge swept the entire downtown. Waterfront blocks were reduced to heaps of rubble. In our hotel, trapped first-floor guests smashed the windows of their rooms to keep from drowning and screamed for help, and we had to drop our cameras and pull them out on mattresses and physically carry the elderly and disabled to the second floor. Mark's leg was ripped open by a piece of debris and he'll require surgery. The city has no communication with the outside world. The hospitals are overflowing with the critically injured. The surrounding communities are mowed down. After a bleak night in a hot, pitch-black, trashed hotel, James, Mark, and I managed to get out of the city on a military chopper and get to Cebu via a C-130-- sitting next to corpses in body bags. Meteorologically, Super Typhoon HAIYAN was fascinating; from a human-interest standpoint, it was utterly ghastly. It's been difficult to process.

[JennyLeez]

Tracking the super typhoon from weather watch Saturday 11.15pm.
'According to our data the worst of the storm is at this moment starting to clear the far western side of the Philippines - it is likely to regain more strength once it moves back out to sea today and away from the mountainous terrain which weakens tropical storms to some degree.

As daylight breaks and the winds - which peaked with gusts at 380km/h - finally ease, we expect to hear more news reports on damage and the death toll.  We expect damage to be catastrophic in some communities'.

Some excellent maps here:

http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/mega-storm-haiyan-saturday-maps-5

[gabba]

From Stuff.co.nz

The central Philippine city of Tacloban was in ruins today, a day after being ravaged by one of the strongest typhoons on record, as horrified residents spoke of storm surges as high as trees and authorities said they were expecting a "very high number of fatalities."

At least 138 people were confirmed dead in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. But Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwen Pang said that agency field staff in the region estimated the toll was about 1000. Pang, however, emphasised that it was "just an estimate." CNN put the death toll at more than 1200.

...continues with video at http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9383623/Typhoon-death-toll-estimated-at-1200-plus

[gabba]

From Stuff.co.nz:

One of the most powerful storms ever recorded has killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines province of Leyte, a senior police official says.

Typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 per cent of the area in its path as it tore through the province, police chief superintendent Elmer Soria said.

It not only brought wind gusts of around 275kmh, it also caused a storm surge and whipped up waves of 5 to 6 metres.

The national government and disaster agency have not confirmed the figure, a sharp increase from initial estimates on Saturday of at least 1000 deaths.

''We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died,'' Soria said.

''The devastation is so big.''

Continues with video at......

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9383623/Typhoon-death-toll-estimated-at-1200-plus

[gabba]

Image courtesy of NASA

[gabba]

Here another Facebook post from iCyclone: (https://www.facebook.com/iCyclone?hc_location=stream). There is a heap more of stuff on that page, as these guys sat through the eye.

Now that we have Internet, James Reynolds was able to post some GoPro shots from our experience at the hotel (his main camera died during the storm and he's still staying to salvage the footage off of it). These graphic shots capture not just the violent winds but also the desperate chaos that occurred within the hotel when the storm surge swept in. We're happy to report no one in our hotel died.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke6ureLcpkk&feature=youtu.be

[gabba]

More video. This time from the eyewall of the storm
Scary stuff

[JennyLeez]

The power unleashed by Super Typhoon Haiyan this week was on a scale that most New Zealanders simply cannot comprehend, especially when compared to our own powerful storms.
Bola and the Wahine storm combined still don't come close to the power unleashed by Haiyan.

Consider the following;

Think back to the deadly tornado that hit Hobsonville, Auckland.  Now we need to do some multiplying.

Take the wind speed in that tornado - which we estimated was around 180 to 200km/h - and almost double it.

Haiyan had winds sustained at 320km/h and gusting to 380km.

Now take the size of the Hobsonville tornado - which only affected a narrow part of one suburb - and spread that damage across every street in Auckland - population 1.5 million.

Now spread that damage from Auckland to Wellington.

Now add another several million people in to the North Island's population.

The Hobsonville tornado lasted less than a minute according to people we've spoken with - Haiyan lasted several hours.

Haiyan also brought a storm surge which some on the scene says rivals the damage caused by the Boxing Day tsunami last decade.  Some estimates put it several metres high.

This storm was a on a scale we can almost not comprehend - and certainly NZ has never even come close to seeing damage on this type of scale from a tropical storm.  Haiyan was the most powerful storm to ever make landfall, in any country on earth, since records began.    It was also the most powerful storm of 2013.

Officials say the death toll will likely be over 10,000 in the Philippines alone.  To donate money, we reccommend the Red Cross, who are now on the ground in the Philippines.

The former typhoon is now falling apart over China.

From weatherwatch.co.nz

[Mark]

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/tropnote/tropnote.shtml

BOM say "Typhoon Haiyan was the strongest storm of the 2013 season and will rank among the strongest storms on record for the northwest Pacific."

Not the strongest ever.

[Weather Display]

someone made the claim it could be the strongest storm to make landfall in history...
before any facts to back that up
the media then went with..'strongest typoon/storm recorded in history'

same thing with the 10,000 killed...

oh well...thats the media these days...

[gabba]

Heres a video of the storm surge frlm the cyclone

[Deano]

Wow, that is some surge!

[Weather Display]

I read that was not in Tacloban...i.e was a bit further away from the eye...
i.e Tacloban had an evern bigger storm surge...which arrived suddenly like that too...i.e like a tsunami...
amazing really!