Slashdot Mirror
Typhoon Haiyan Continues To Scourge Southeast Asia
jones_supa writes "ABC Australia is reporting extensively about the progress of the Typhoon Haiyan, which has reached the status of being one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded. Over the weekend it has caused severe destruction and misery passing through Philippines with maximum sustained winds of 315 km/h, where the authorities are now struggling to bring relief to areas worst affected, there being 10,000 people dead. The storm is now heading towards Vietnam, where already over 600,000 people have been evacuated. Meanwhile, China announced its highest alert for Typhoon Haiyan as six crew members of a cargo boat were reported missing. Vietnam is likely to be spared the storm's initial ferocity as it has weakened over the South China Sea and is now expected to hit as a category 1 storm, with wind speeds of about 74 km/h, meteorologists say."
If you have actually seen the sort of winds that Haiyan made, it would make a scourging/flagellation seem mild by comparison. I saw the winds snap a full grown coconut palm at the base from footage taken at Tacloban in the Philippines. Was extremely lucky that it missed Manila. Had its track been only a few degrees more northerly than it had been, we would likely have experienced similar devastation.
Also bear in mind that even that chart is skewed to show more hurricanes in recent years. Satellites and aircraft flying into hurricanes are fairly recent inventions. So any storms which were hurricanes at sea but diminished to tropical storms by the time they hit land during the first half of the 20th century wouldn't be included in that chart, simply because nobody knew they existed.