Typhoons

We were told during training that the Philippines is hit by an average of 22 typhoons a year, and that the Bicol region is more affected than any other part of the country. A few storms have crossed through northern Luzon in the past few months, but none of this really hit home for me until last week.

Typhoon Mina was scheduled to directly hit my province last Friday, perhaps developing into a super typhoon, forecasters were saying early in the week. My co-workers and host family were understandably anxious about this, especially since over 700 people died when super typhoon Reming struck Albay almost exactly a year ago on November 30th, 2006. (Many of the deaths were due to lahar or mud flows coming from the Mount Mayon volcano.)

It had been raining hard the past few days, causing enough flooding in Legazpi City that the governor canceled all classes in the province on Tuesday. With school canceled, I spent a lot of time at home, reading and otherwise puttering around the house, watching my host family nail big pieces of plywood to our windows. The rain continued on, day and night, without stopping. I found myself getting nervous, even though we have a basement at our house and I know that my host family would do an excellent job of figuring out what to do if a disaster should occur. They survived Reming, after all.

On Thursday I learned that the storm was starting to change direction, and began to reevaluate my decision to skip out on the Thanksgiving celebrations scheduled for that weekend. It was so sad to think that I was going to miss out on pie, stuffing, wine, and turducken, so I felt really happy when it started to look like it would be safe to travel.

In the end, the storm literally came right to the doorstep of the Philippines, slowed down, and drastically changed direction. So far, 17 typhoon deaths have been counted in northern Luzon, but the damage is much less than what was expected, and for that we are all very thankful.


Then on Tuesday, we were informed that a weakened typhoon Lando re-entered the Philippines, crossing to the East in an unusual fashion. Although it was due to cross the Bicol region this morning and give us a lot of rain, I woke up to a surprisingly sunny sky. I guess our town is some sort of lucky!

On a final note, our safety and security coordinator included this in a recent update on the situation and I thought it was interesting in a physical sciences kind of way:

"PAGASA explained that Lando's movement is being affected by Mina due to the Fujiwhara effect. The Fujiwhara effect is brought about by the interaction between two tropical cyclones at an appreciable distance.

When the cyclones approach each other, their centers will begin orbiting cyclonically about a point between the two systems. The two vortices will be attracted to each other, and eventually spiral into the center point and merge. When the two vortices are of unequal size, the larger vortex (MINA) will tend to dominate the interaction, and the smaller vortex will orbit around it.

The effect is often mentioned in relation to the motion of tropical cyclones. The effect becomes pronounced in these storms when they approach within about 1450 km (900 miles) of each other and are at tropical storm strength or stronger."

Almost certainly we'll have more typhoons in the coming weeks and months, as it is rainy season, and Bicol is the most affected region, but for now everything is calm.