Super Typhoon Hagupit is on its way to the Philippines. The image above shows the storm track for Typhoon Haiyan, which was a very damaging super Typhoon that came through the same area last year, and served as an example of climate change making things worse. The smaller map is the Japan Meteorological Agency's prediction of Hagupit's path. They are very very similar.
Hagupit will not likely be as strong as Haiyan (see details here) because the region does not have the extra warm deep water that supercharged Haiyan. But Hagupit is still going to be a bad storm.
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I’m sure the measurements are still being checked and adjusted but it is clear that Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was one of the most powerful tropical cyclones (termed “Typhoon” in the western Pacific) ever recorded. There are several ways to measure how big and bad a tropical cyclone is including it’s…
The outer reaches of Typhoon Hagupit are already affecting the target region in the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the areas most under the gun, but the potential for serious problems covers a very large area. The storm has gone through quite a few changes over the last…
While reading an AP attributed article on Huffington post about Super Typhoon Haiyan (also known as Yolanda), I did a double take at this paragraph:
Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour), with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph), when it made…
Update on Haiyan/Yolanda Death Toll
The final figures are not likely in but the numbers have stabilized and we can now probably put a number to the human toll of this storm that will not change dramatically in the future, at least in terms of orders of magnitude. The current “official” death toll…
"Deep water"? Not surface water?
Deep water. But deep in relation to the surface, not "big deep" deep.
Tropical cyclones develop with surface waters of some 80F or so, but as they form and move along, they cause mixing near the surface so the part of the sea surface that the front part of the storm is over has been churned up and is now likely lower than that threshold, or at least, cooler. With some recent storms, water was over 80F at depth of 100 or even 200 meters. This means that the cooling caused by churning essentially doesn't happen and the hurricane can grow much stronger.
Here's what iHagupit looks like in real time on the X cellent Earth satellite imagery site -- just rotate the globe to the Philipine side and zoom in .
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic…
Wow.