Super Typhoon Haiyan

Hurricane Wilma is the strongest storm ever recorded -- luckily it didn't make landfall at full-strength.

Images of Wilma taken from the ISS:

Spoiler

Haiyan was just as powerful except it did make landfall when it was raging at its strongest. The eye walls of Haiyan and Wilma were more like super-massive tornadoes than hurricanes -- the power of these storms is unreal.

 

Full resolution pic from space at night before it's about to swallow the island

(very large pic)

Spoiler

 

Wow, what an amazing photo.

 

Wow, that makes me shiver just thinking about it.

 

Wilma at its peak was a strong storm, no doubt, but this thing was unlike anything ever seen in the satellite era. Unfortunately there was no recon to back up what we were seeing but I have no doubt that this thing outclassed anything the Atlantic has seen in the modern era.

 

I believe they are very comparable storms due to their bizarre intensity.
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[Wilma's] convection gradually organized, and from October 18 through October 19, Wilma underwent explosive deepening over the open waters of the Caribbean. In a 30- hour period, the pressure dropped from 982 mbar (hPa; 29 inHg) to the record-low of 882 mbar (hPa; 26.05 inHg), while the winds increased to 185 mph (295 km/h).

At its peak intensity, the eye of Wilma was about 2.3 miles (3.7 km) in diameter... [this is about the same same size of the tornado that hit El Reno this year except smaller].

link

The El Reno, Okla. tornado was widest ever measured on Earth, had nearly 300 mph winds

[El Reno] was wider than any tornado ever observed or surveyed according to the National Weather Service and leading tornado researcher, Howard Bluestein. The massive El Reno, Okla. twister reached an unthinkable maximum width of 2.6 miles.

link

 

stay safe bro.Godspeed

 

oh boy, another typhoon brewing in the pacific moving toward the Philippines again.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/11/10/13/new-storm-pass-same-route-yolanda

 

Kona and Dragician and others who have family there I want to leverage the power of Clutchfans to help out. I volunteer with a group called Architecture for Humanity and my chapter has worked on reconstruction projects in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, NOLA and Mississippi after Katrina, and in 2009 I led a group down to rebuild houses in Surfside after Ike. On that last project I worked with fellow Clutchfan Rhester, on putting that project together and I would like to see if we can do something like that for what's going on the Philippines. Send me a message to: sishir@c3designinc.com and we can talk about how AFH could help with the recovery.

 

glad i was still able to login in clutchfans (though i felt sad about rockets loses).. that was the strongest typhoon we've ever encountered. Our roof was almost ripped off, power and water are down for about 2 days and the bridge that we use to go to the city was destroyed. Glad my family and relatives were ok.. It's heartbreaking to watch the news now.

 

Geez, the Philippines is on that list 5 times!!

Prayers out to those in the Philippines and to family and friends of those on clutchfans (Kona, dragician, Jamers). Hoping your family is well & for a speedy recovery

 

Considering our country gets hit on a regular basis, most of us thought that this was just one of those typical storms where we casually pick up the pieces right after, Heck I have to admit that even me and my folks were just ready with that "Here we go again" approach.

Sanay na sanay na kami (We're used to it so much.), so we say in Tagalog, that was our mindset.

Then the storm came. It didn't hit Manila, but went on top of Tacloban. Few days later, we thought our fellow Filipinos were just gonna laugh this off like what resilient Filipinos typically do, but damn, this one was really different. It was beginning to be clear and sink in that we were gonna need help.

 

I'm looking on Google Earth and as bad as Tacloban is things are probably much worse in some of the other parts there. I just read that no word is out of the city of Guiuan that sits on a peninusla on the east side of the Gulf of Leyte. Right at the edge of the Gulf to the South China Sea where the cyclone came from.

Tacloban by comparison is on the other side of gulf and is shielded from the ocean by Samar island.

 

I talked to my Filipina friend before the storm hit and she had that exact same mentality. I was kind of amazed, but like you said there are so many storms there people get complacent. Her family is in Manila, so they lucked out.

 

I understand this attitude as a late teenager to childless mid 30's/40's type person.

Anyone with this attitude with kids needs to rethink life's priorities. especially in today's day and age, where they really do say with a fairly solid degree of precision, what will happen. in this case there was certainly warning that this was going to be a storm like never seen. maybe that warning didn't make it to the residents...

 

From what I've heard from family over there, nobody really knew how big the storm surge was going to be. They weren't told that it was going to be pretty much like a tsunami. The storm surge is what really caused most of the deaths.

 

Yeah, it really was the storm surge that did most of the obliteration.

I watched the local news today and they showed a captured footage from within the Tacloban Mayor's house (obviously the most well built house in the whole of Tacloban).

The 2nd floor and ceiling had minor damage, but the powerful surging water is clearly seen on the lower part of the house, much like in a Tsunami.

Our people anticipated the storm, but they never expected that this particular wind speed would stir up the sea like that. Clearly a grave mistake we have to swallow and learn from.

 

Generally in hurricanes the storm surge is the most damaging part. A lot of attention is paid on the wind speeds and hurricane strength is based on that when it seems like more attention should be paid on how potentially large the storm surge could be.