Tyfoon Soudelor: Doden in Taiwan en China

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Massive damage in saipan from Soudelor

Guam may have been spared over the weekend from Mother Nature's wrath, but our neighbors in the north took a beating from Typhoon Soudelor last night. Jillian Angeline with KSPN2 News in Saipan reports massive destruction in Saipan due to a direct passage of the eyewall over the island.

"Trees are down, over 100 power poles are down now, and there's no timetable for restoration for power, water, or wastewater, the CUC met with a federal dept. of energy representative. He flew in with FEMA who are here to assess damage and the needs. The CNMI Ports Authority has not made a decision on when the airport will reopen. Only after the runway is free and clear of debris will arrangements be made for relief flights. About 400 people have taken shelters all around Saipan. It's a minute-by-minute assessment," Angeline detailed.

CNMI Acting Governor Ralph Torres has declared the commonwealth in a state of major disaster and significant emergency.

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Typhoon Soudelor to Threaten China, Taiwan

Typhoon Soudelor in the western Pacific Ocean will continue to strengthen over the coming days, eventually threatening Taiwan, eastern China late this week or next weekend.

Soudelor, now located to the west of Guam and the northern Mariana Islands will continue to depart the area after bringing powerful winds and downpours on Sunday night.

The center of the storm passed directly over the island of Saipan, to the north of Guam with Category 2 hurricane-force winds.

Winds to near 170 kph (105 mph) were reported on Saipan as the eyewall of Soudelor passed over the island. Guam to the south was largely spared any damaging winds as gusts reached 50-65 kph (30-40 mph) for several hours.



Soudelor will continue to strengthen while it crosses the northern Philippines Sea on its way towards eastern Asia. Warm ocean water and low wind shear will allow for significant strengthening and the typhoon could reach the equivalent strengthen of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane by the middle of next week.

Despite being a week out, there is growing confidence that Taiwan, eastern China and the southern Ryukyu Islands will have to contend with Soudelor as early as Thursday night or Friday, with continued impacts into next week.

The tropical system is still expected to be a significant typhoon during this time, so residents from Shanghai to Taipei should being making initial preparations for the storm.

Super Typhoon Soudelor From ISS

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A slightly weaker Soudelor threatens Taiwan

Having completed an eyewall regeneration cycle, Super Typhoon Soudelor was sporting a less impressive convective shield and slightly weaker sustained winds on Tuesday, but it remained a formidable storm. Peak sustained winds were estimated by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) at 130 knots (around 150 mph) at 1800 GMT (2:00 pm EDT) Tuesday.

Soudelor remains on a classic west-northwest path around the south side of an upper-level ridge, and models are still in close agreement on a landfall in Taiwan on Friday night or Saturday morning local time. The JTWC is calling for gradual weakening over the next couple of days, mainly due to subsidence related to a nearby tropospheric upper-level trough (TUTT).

Apart from the TUTT, conditions are highly supportive of some eventual restrengthening. Category 4 strength is possible at landfall, according to the JTWC forecast from 2100 GMT Tuesday (5:00 pm EDT). Soudelor could end up even stronger than predicted if another rapid intensification cycle were to take place (such cycles are difficult to predict in advance).

Soudelor will likely go on to strike mainland China as a strong tropical storm or Category 1 typhoon.

twitter:

ExtremeStorms twitterde op woensdag 05-08-2015 om 15:53:10 Incredible shot of Typhoon Soudelor aftermath on Saipan via my FB feed: http://t.co/wKw68bfcvr reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 6 augustus 2015 23:34 schreef Geralt het volgende:

[..]

Het ziet er allemaal voor mij als totale leek op dit gebied nogal heftig uit

Of is dit gewoon een doodnormale storm zoals we ze wel vaker hebben ergens in de wereld?

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A bigger question mark is how strong Soudelor will be when it reaches Taiwan.

Soudelor currently has a rather large eye (roughly 55 miles across, close to half a degree of longitude), with an intensifying solid ring of convection surrounded by a large field of spiral banding. Mesovortices (small-scale circulations) could be seen spinning within the large eye in visible satellite imagery. Soudelor’s brief stint as a super typhoon earlier this week was interrupted by an eyewall replacement cycle, with the much larger eye succeeding the typhoon’s originally tiny eye (about 5 miles in diameter, one of the smallest on record for a landfalling system, when Soudelor struck Saipan). Since that point, Soudelor has had some trouble rebuilding a large, solid core of convection, despite its excellent overall structure and the gradually increasing size of its envelope of moisture and banding. Dvorak imagery from the MTSAT satellite over the last few hours shows that very cold cloud tops (a sign of intense convection) are beginning to wrap around Soudelor’s eye once again, and temperatures within the eye are warming, another sign of intensification. Soudelor is now moving over slightly warmer SSTs (29-30�C, or 84-86�F, about 1�C above average) as it approaches Taiwan, and wind shear will be low (only around 5 - 10 mph).

Dynamical models generally agree in bringing Soudelor back to at least Category 3 strength before landfall in Taiwan, and I would not be at all surprised to see Soudelor pass the Category 4 threshold. The nation’s urbanized areas are well prepared for high typhoon winds, though widespread power outages and transportation disruptions are likely. Massive amounts of rain will fall where Soudelor slams into the north-south mountain range that spans most of Taiwan, and substantial local flooding and mudslides can be expected. Fortunately, Soudelor’s steady movement will help keep its rainfall totals below the truly prodigious amounts that slower-moving systems such as 2009’s Typhoon Morakot can produce. Morakot was only a Category 1 storm, but it moved in a leisurely cyclonic loop across northern Taiwan, prolonging the widespread intense rainfall. Morakot caused more than 450 deaths and some $3.3 billion US in damage.