today's topic: Typhoons and storms

Typhoon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about Pacific tropical cyclones. For other uses, see Typhoon (disambiguation).
Three different typhoons spinning over the western Pacific Ocean on August 7, 2006

A typhoon is a tropical cyclone that develops in the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean between 180° and 100°E. For organizational purposes, the northern Pacific Ocean is divided into three regions: the eastern (North America to 140°W), central (140°W to 180°), and western (180° to 100°E). A Pacific typhoon, then, is a tropical cyclone in the northern Pacific Ocean west of 180°. Identical phenomena in the eastern north Pacific are called hurricanes, with tropical cyclones moving into the Western Pacific re-designated as typhoons.

Within the Northwestern Pacific there are no official typhoon seasons as tropical cyclones form throughout the year. The majority of storms form between May and December whilst tropical cyclone formation is at a minimum between January and April. The Northwestern Pacific features some of the most intense tropical cyclones on record.

The effects of cyclones are many, like this - the typhoon Megi:

Typhoon Megi Kills Seven at Temple in Taiwan After

Triggering Landslides

Locals push a car through flood damage in Suao, eastern Taiwan. Photographer: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images

Typhoon Megi crossed over Taiwan, killing at least seven people at a temple complex, leaving a busload of Chinese tourists missing and causing power outages before moving on toward Xiamen in China’s Fujian province.

The deaths occurred when a house next to a Buddhist temple in Suao township in Yilan county was covered in a landslide, the National Fire Agency in Taipei said in a statement on its website. Nineteen mainland tourists, their driver and guide remained missing as of 9 p.m. local time yesterday, the government agency said.

More than 1,182 millimeters (46 1/2 inches) of rain has fallen in Suao, Taiwan’s fire agency said in the statement. The agency said 2,742 people in the northeastern coastal county of Yilan have been evacuated.

Megi, which left 19 people dead in the Philippines, earlier trapped about 400 people in their vehicles as roads closed, Taiwan’s cabinet said in a faxed statement earlier yesterday. Search teams had reached all 53 people who remain trapped at 7 p.m., the fire agency said later.

In Hong Kong, which had braced for a possible direct hit, the city’s observatory canceled all storm signals at 8:40 p.m. local time last night. Megi is forecast to move at about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) per hour toward the coast of Fujian province in southern China, continuing to weaken, the observatory said.

The storm was about 200 kilometers south of Xiamen at 2 a.m. local time today and is projected to make landfall in southern China this afternoon, according to the Hong Kong Observatory’s website.

A total of 2,987 households are still without power in Taiwan at 9 p.m. and agricultural losses have reached about NT$46 million ($1.5 million), the fire agency said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from the coastal areas of southeast China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Text from: www.bloomberg.com

and

www.telegraph.co.uk writes:

Record rains from a powerful typhoon caused massive mud- and rockslides in Taiwan that buried a Buddhist temple and trapped vehicles on a highway. The mudslide at the temple killed seven people, and overall, 25 people were missing in Taiwan as Typhoon Megi swept toward southern China. The storm earlier killed 26 people and damaged homes and crops in the Philippines. Megi dumped a record 45 inches (114 centimetres) of rain in Taiwan's Ilan county over 48 hours. It had winds of 90 mph (145 kph)