From an AP article on the Washington Post website:
About 20 typhoons and tropical storms hit the Philippines each year.
Yeah, right....almost as bad a science blooper as Scalia's!
[By the way, here's the 2004 Northwest Pacific storm tracks, looks like about 3-5 hit the Philippines in that year.]
UPDATE: Unbelievable, the AP repeats this staggeringly incorrect factoid again here. If 20 typhoons and tropical storms hit the Philippines each year, who would live there?
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Very wonderfool.
LOL! NYT website is running that too...I wonder how long it'll take for a wingnut to pick up on that and say that it's irrefutible evidence that global warming isn't happening.
PAGASA graphs of frequency of occurrence. Looks to me like their official count is about 9 land falling tropical cyclones per year, 1948 - 2004 average.
See also, PAGASA 27 most destructive tropical cyclones during 1948 - 2000, and recent season tracks
The Philippines do get a lot of land falling storms, but not 20! .
I don't know how to compare this year's 4 land falling typhoons of major hurricane strength to the above. To get an idea of how greatly estimates of TC intensity vary, see this article and note the table about 2-4 pages down, past all the cool microwave pics of TY Durian. PAGASA is not on the table, but It shows that even when JMA and JTWC assign the same Dvorak intensity number to the storm, the wind speeds they assign to that Dvorak number can differ by 1 or more Saffir Simpson categories. And the JMA and JTWC subjective Dvorak numbers often differ by 0.5, 1, or sometimes more. PAGASA is often differs as much from JTWC as JMA does, though not necessarily in the same direction.
One item I forgot in previous comment. In the frequency of occurrence table, notice the table for tropical cyclones in PAGASA's area of concern (PAR), shows an average of 20 per year.
It looks like the AP fumbled land falling storms for monitored storms.
llewelly may have discovered the answer to that one. Yes, 20-odd storms and typhoons do visit our fair archipelago, but only less than half make landfall. PAGASA obviously counts all storms, cyclones and typhoons that enter the Philippine area of responsibility. AP should clarify their usage of the number.
Answering the update question: Poor people who have no choice in the matter, which is to say a substantial majority of current residents.
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