Kent
Weather Guru
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Loc: Ft. Lauderdale
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Ferocious Typhoon Dujuan slammed Guangdong Province in southeastern China killing at least 38 people and injuring about 1,000 others. The storm packed winds of 89 miles per hour as it approached China's coast. Dujuan barreled across several major cities, destroying thousands of homes. It's the most destructive storm to rip through the region in nearly a quarter of a century. The typhoon lost its punch as it moved over land and was downgraded to a tropical storm with winds below 74 mph (119 km/h).
Earlier in the week, Dujuan raked Taiwan with pounding rains and howling winds, killing two people. It cut power to more than a half million homes. Dujuan then took aim at Hong Kong, which shut down businesses, schools, and air traffic as the island's residents nervously watched the storm's approach. Although the storm brought huge waves, knocked out power, and triggered floods and mudslides, Hong Kong was spared the brunt of the storm's fury.
The Hong Kong Observatory reported the typhoon was unusual in that it appeared to have two eyes Normally, a typhoon's winds swirl around a single eye, the area of lowest pressure at the storm's center.
they have a picture too:
http://www.phschool.com/science/planetdiary/archive03/cycl1090503.html
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Keith234
Storm Chaser
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Loc: 40.7N/73.3W Long Island
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Man, I got so caught up in our problems that I totally forgot about the west pacific. Ferocious with 89 mph that's odd, they get supertyphoon's with 190 mph winds it must be based on a 10 min average as opposed to a 1 min average? Anyway hope everyone in the area that the typhoon hit is okay, don't you think that should of been in the news?
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"I became insane with horrible periods of sanity"
Edgar Allan Poe
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Kent
Weather Guru
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Loc: Ft. Lauderdale
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Keith I posted this in reference to a topic about hurricanes with two eyes. I was asking about Jeanne.
It made sense where I had it but somehow I posted it here. This storm is not one that just occured.
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Keith234
Storm Chaser
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Loc: 40.7N/73.3W Long Island
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Stupid me, I thought that was our next storm because the last storm was Chaba. The two eye thing is a weird event, I think it has to do with the concetric eye wall cycle or .
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"I became insane with horrible periods of sanity"
Edgar Allan Poe
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Kent
Weather Guru
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Loc: Ft. Lauderdale
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Did you look at the picture though?
It has two eyes
not one within another...
its weird
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ant89
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I looked into tropical cylcones that have gone above 8.0 on the Scale and found only two. Typhoon Zeb supposedly did in October 1998, but I haven't found any source saying what number. Typhoon Angela in 1995 was that one that hit 8.3. If that was accurate.....woah a storm with a pressure approaching 25.00 inches..doesn't seem possible. Do you know what the final word was on the peak winds, pressure, and number for Chaba?
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Keith234
Storm Chaser
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Loc: 40.7N/73.3W Long Island
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I can tell you that it was way up there with Chaba, but I believe Dianmu had winds of 190 mph's sustained. Go to www.typhoon2000.com for more info on historic typhoons, very good site for research and tracking!
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"I became insane with horrible periods of sanity"
Edgar Allan Poe
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ant89
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The annoying thing about Pacific Typhoons is that information on them tends to be sketchy and inconsistent. I got that <872 millibars reading for Zeb from a website ranking some of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever. This was also the site that mentioned the rumor that Zeb acheived higher than an 8.0. No other website I have looked at has confirmed the 872 milliibar pressure estimate or this rumor.
Angela is also an engima to me. I've seen several sites mentioning an 8.3 on the Scale for this storm, but the pressure estimates were listed as 900 millibars which really doesn't make sense. Afterall, if it really got an 8.3, I'm surprised its not thought to be the most powerful ever.
Finally, there is Typhoon Tip. For the storm with the lowest recorded pressure ever, you'd expect it to be a perfectly formed system, but in pictures of it dated from the day when the 870 millibar reading was taken, it doesn't even look like a hurricane: no eye, not circular/symetrical, gaps in the cloudmass etc.
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Keith234
Storm Chaser
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Loc: 40.7N/73.3W Long Island
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Yeah I know. I started tracking tropical weather in the western pacific because the general motion of the storms is near the same because of the predictable ridge over Japan. I don't get why they don't do recon flights, the information would be overwhemling and would benefit the field. If these satellite estimates are correct those islands (Guam etc.) have experniced mega storms and the storms in the Atlantic basin are depressions compared to them.
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"I became insane with horrible periods of sanity"
Edgar Allan Poe
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ant89
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Also, it’s interesting to note that the Atlantic may actually hold the record for strongest tropical cyclone ever. During the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, a man with 5 witnesses to back him up claimed that his barometer bottomed out at 26.00 inches of mercury before he discarded it because holding onto it was beginning to infringe on his safety given the conditions around him.
If that barometer was correct, the Labor Day Hurricane may very well be stronger than any Pacific typhoon. Three hours before, the barometer had been falling at 1/100 inch every 5 minutes. The eye would not come ashore for another hour after the 26.00 reading was observed. At the same rate of fall, one could conservatively estimate that the pressure hit 25.88 inches. However, the rate of fall increases as you get closer to the center of the storm, so it could easily have been considerably lower. It wouldn’t have taken much to top the 25.69 in Typhoon Tip. (All of this assuming the barometer was right)
I have no idea why the <26.00 reading is not accepted and the higher pressure of 26.35 inches is used instead. Perhaps meteorologists at the time felt 26.00 was too low to be possible and therefore surmised that either the barometer was not functioning or the guy was making up the story.
(If anyone has also heard about this and knows exactly why this reading is not accepted, please tell me)
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Clark
Meteorologist
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Simple answer to why there aren't any recon flights in the WPac: $$$$. There's not enough of it to go around to do regular recon out there - yet alone in the East Pacific. Great distances to some storms from Guam or other U.S. bases makes it somewhat impractical as well. It's one of the things that went out the window about 20-25 years ago along with 6-hrly upper-air launches, among other things.
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Current Tropical Model Output Plots
(or view them on the main page for any active Atlantic storms!)
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ant89
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But the US does 6 hour recons into storms.... and those distances are not that much shorter. And besides if the could set up bases in Japan, the Phillipines, Guam, and some of those other little islands, the distances could be reduced and the cost divided. You'd think America or Japan would put up the money, given how often Japan and Guam are hit. It is very unfortunate that they don't though, since some of these Pacific basin storms are so strong and well formed studying them would benefit knowledge of the workings of hurricanes so much. Having a Camille strength storm sitting in the ocean like an everyday tropical wave to them.
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