Super Typhoon Haiyan slammed the central islands of the Phillipines overnight and with sustained winds of nearly 200 mph the ferocious storm fulfilled fears that it would go down as the worlds most powerful tropical storm to make landfall in all recorded history. According to meteorologist Jeff Masters, citing wind speed estimates from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC, Haiyan had winds of 190-195 mph at landfall, making it the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history. The previous record was held by the Atlantics Hurricane Camille of 1969, which made landfall in Mississippi with 190 mph winds. Three people have been reported killed by the storm as of Friday morning, but that number is expected to rise. Tens of thousands were evacuated and the World Food Programme has warned that as many as 2.5 million people will need emergency assistance in the storms wake. Giant waves, over fifteen feet in some places, were reporting as Haiyan came ashore but it was the wind strength that was cited as the most destructive aspect of the storm. As communication systems are down in the hardest hit areas, damage reports from those places were so far hard to come by.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 18:22:03 +0000
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