At 7:00AM today, the location of eye or center of Typhoon Haima, LAWIN as it is known in the Philippines was located based on all available data at at 450 km East of Casiguran, Aurora (16.1, 126.3) according to PAGASA.
Its strength has the maximum winds of 205 kph near the center and gustiness of up to 255 kph, added by PAGASA.
But according to U.S. Naval Observatory's Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) Haima is now a super typhoon with winds can go up to 270 kph which is an equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane.
As mentioned by CNN Meteorologist Taylor Ward, Super Typhoon Haima is the third strongest typhoon of this season. It is also the second typhoon that hits the Philippines in one week.
"Since this storm is very strong where, or if, it makes landfall in the Philippines will be very important. The area around the center will have extreme damage from the winds as well as a significant storm surge," added by Ward.
“The storm is on track to hit the north of Luzon midnight local time from Wednesday night into Thursday morning,” as reported by Katie Hunt and Joshua Berlinger, CNN.
Ward added that “though the storm surge and winds near the center of Haima will be catastrophic, the area of the coastline it's expected to hit is very sparsely populated. As many as 2.7 million people are expected to be affected by the typhoon across seven Philippine provinces. Haima is then expected to veer northwest and hit the Chinese coast by Friday evening."
Current projections take the storm into eastern Guangdong province, to the east of Hong Kong, but we will keep a close eye on Hong Kong in the coming days as some models take the storm fairly close," said Ward.
The storm will be much weaker by that point, though flooding could still occur.
Sources:
The storm will be much weaker by that point, though flooding could still occur.
Sources:
- http://www.google.org/publicalerts/alert?aid=44dbc346692eb56d&hl=en&gl=PH&source=web
- Katie Hunt and Joshua Berlinger, CNN
- ABS-CBN News Oct 19 2016 02:41 AM