A few months back it was an
accepted fact that the Philippines was playing host to one weather disturbance
after another, from tropical depressions to fully-formed typhoons. Many of this
year’s batch of Pacific weather anomalies have done everything from making
landfall and passing through parts of the country, to just traversing the
Philippine Sea within the Area of Responsibility and moving on to Japan, Taiwan
or mainland China. Now, the latest official typhoon of 2019 has bypassed the
PAR completely, ironically despite having an international name familiar to
Filipinos: Hagibis. It is instead barreling towards Japan, after becoming a
super typhoon for the longest duration of all this year.
CNN reports that Hagibis, the ninth recorded typhoon-level weather
disturbance in the Pacific this 2019, and the third to be classified as a super
typhoon, has now established a record of being the longest-lived of those super
typhoons so far this year. It has been ranked as such for 60 hours, and will
likely gain more time until it makes landfall and possibly downgrades.
Measurements by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JWTC) have Hagibis with an
eye 55 kilometers wide, sustained winds of 195 km/h and gustiness of 280 km/h.
Typhoon tracking has confirmed
that TY Hagibis will hit Japan sometime this weekend. Already the JTWC is
estimating that the center of the super typhoon will either pass very close or
go directly over Tokyo, the capital. This is going to be bad news considering
that Tokyo had just brushed off Typhoon Faxai last September, causing $7
billion in damage to the Japanese economy and killing three persons to boot.
The fact that Hagibis will have the comparable strength of a Category 2
hurricane from North America upon reaching the metropolis is very worrying for
residents, especially as its course seems to be following Faxai’s.
Path projections for Hagibis have
it moving in a north-northwesterly direction towards the main Japanese island
of Honshu until this Thursday, October 10. Come Friday, October 11, the
direction will shift to the north-northeast, which is how the super typhoon
will pass within proximity of Tokyo. According to CNN meteorologist Monica Garrett, Hagibis will spend Saturday and
Sunday moving through central Japan, causing “deteriorating conditions” and
over 250 millimeters rainfall. In the worst case, it will force the country to
cancel some games for the ongoing 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Hagibis, which shares its name
with the famous disco group nicknamed the “Village People of the Philippines,” has
nothing to do with the country anymore. Nonetheless, weather agency PAGASA
notes that if it had entered the PAR this week, it would have been named “Perla.”
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