Thousands Feared Dead After Super Typhoon Haiyan Devastates Philippines

Devestation in Tacloban, Philippines, caused by Typhoon Haiyan.Ryan Lim/Xinhua/ZUMA


Update (11/10/13): Thousands are feared dead after Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the Philippines Friday. Government officials are estimating that 10,000 people died in Leyte Province, in the eastern part of the country, according to the Associated Press.

The 13-foot storm surge left the coastal city of Tacloban “in ruins,” according to the New York Times. “There is no power, no water, nothing,” Voltaire Gazmin, the country’s defense secretary, reportedly said of the situation in Tacloban. “People are desperate. They’re looting.”

Haiyan made landfall once again Monday morning local time, hitting northern Vietnam with 75 mile-per-hour winds.

Super Typhoon Haiyan

Super Typhoon Haiyan as it made landfall in the Philippines.  NOAA

By at least one measurement, it appears that Super Typhoon Haiyan, which just slammed into the Philippine island of Samar, may be the strongest storm reliably recorded on Earth. Additional measurements and analysis will surely be necessary to confirm this, but for now, here’s what we know:

The US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which tracks typhoons and Super Typhoons—the most powerful storms on the planet—estimated Haiyan’s maximum one-minute sustained winds at 170 knots, which translates into about 195 miles per hour. 

According to meteorologist Jeff Masters, a number of Pacific storms prior to 1969 were measured with wind speeds equal to or above 170 knots, but these estimates are now considered unreliable. Since 1969, the three strongest storms on record by wind speed all had winds of 165 knots, or 190 miles per hour: 1979’s Super Typhoon Tip, 1969’s Atlantic Hurricane Camille, and 1980’s Atlantic Hurricane Allen. Haiyan just passed all three by this metric, though Masters notes that there is less confidence in Haiyan’s true intensity, since Tip, Camille, and Allen were all investigated by hurricane hunter aircraft. Haiyan’s intensity has only been estimated based on satellite images (you can read more about how these satellite measurements are done, and why Haiyan presented such a stunning satellite image, in this great New Republic article by Nate Cohn).

There are some additional caveats here: Wind speeds are only one way of determining a storm’s intensity. Another is measuring its minimum central pressure, and here Tip still reigns supreme, with a minimum central pressure of 870 millibars.

Most disturbing of all is another record: At landfall, Haiyan was more intense than any other landfalling storm.

Is it possible that Haiyan was a “Category 6” hurricane? Officially, the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale defines the category 5 range (the highest category) as beginning at 137 knots. But once you’re 33 knots above that, as Haiyan was, perhaps the scale has been superseded. After all, the entire Category 2 range only spans 12 knots.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate