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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 02/29/2012 : 00:30:54
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I personally was lucky last year. The typhoons and tropical storms that hit this Northern Luzon mountain city caused me little inconvenience, aside from longish power and Internet outrages. Some local people weren't so lucky. One was killed by a tree falling, and three people were killed, with two left missing and almost certainly dead, when the city's garbage dump slid down a mountain and wiped out many homes.
The worst deaths of the last season, though, were caused by slides caused by non-cyclonic storms in the southernmost islands of the Philippines.
Here's a map from Wiki, cropped by me to show the western part of 2011's typhoon paths. The Philippines is hit more often by tropical cyclones than any country on earth, and is often their first landfall. Note the red X, marked "You are not here." That's Baguio's location. The eyes of at least three typhoons crossed directly over this city last year, almost as though this place had a "magnetism" like that which attracts tornadoes to American mobile home parks.
There's no telling what's coming for the 2011 Typhoon season. With global warming, things seem to be changing. (Locals tend to think the weather cycles are coming a bit later in the season in recent years.) One speculation I've read is that tropical cyclones are becoming larger in size, but maybe not more intense or more frequent. Since this part of the world already has the most geographically humongous tropical cyclones in the world, things may get very interesting indeed. Infrastructure allowing, I will try to keep people at SFN informed about whatever happens as the season progresses.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
Edited by - HalfMooner on 02/29/2012 02:51:05
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chefcrsh
Skeptic Friend
Hong Kong
380 Posts |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2012 : 02:46:45 [Permalink]
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Hey, thanks, Chef! I didn't have those links, but I'll check 'em out.
Edited to add:
The Hong Kong Observatory has a great site, Chef. Much better than our local PAGASA.
I suspect PAGASA (Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration) is far underfunded. One thing that irritates me about PAGASA is that they give a local name for every tropical cyclone that enters the "Philippine Area of Responsibility," causing confusion when there are usually already perfectly good international names for those storms. (Then, the Philippines has recently, and unilaterally, renamed the South China Sea as the West Philippine Sea. Silly excesses of nationalism in a prickly former colonial land.) PAGASA also consistently ignores storms until they come charging into the PAR. They don't fly planes into typhoons for data, but I don't think anyone in Asia does that anymore. (The US used to, but quit, I think.)
Anyway the HK Observatory has some really good stuff about climate change, and the historical rise in HK of both sea level and temperatures.
I have previously made the US military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center my primary source for information on these storms, but I may go to the HK site first from here on.
Again, thanks! |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 02/29/2012 03:30:08 |
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Two months until Typhoon season
