Typhoon Soudelor, the strongest cyclone on Earth so far this year, was only a strong Category 3 typhoon when it hit Saipan on Aug. 2, but its impact should already be a lesson, according to a meteorologist.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should be a lesson on what\u2019s a Category 3, what it can do. But there\u2019s another level, there\u2019s the [Category] 4 then you get into the [Category] 5. That\u2019s an unimaginable level when the winds really are 200 miles an hour,\u201d Dr. Mark Lander of the Water and Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific in the University of Guam told Saipan Tribune in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
Lander said Soudelor should be a wakeup call that there are stronger categories of typhoons that are more destructive and catastrophic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should make people think. What happened here is a solid, very strong typhoon but not catastrophic. It wasn\u2019t up into the [Category] 4, it might just have been touching 4 but its nowhere near 5; it wasn\u2019t a super typhoon. That should make people go, \u2018If that was a [Category] 3, what\u2019s a [Category] 4? What\u2019s a [Category] 5?\u2019\u201d Lander said.<\/p>\n
Super typhoons or Category 5\u2019s\u2014which Soudelor grew into before it reached Taiwan, and Haiyan that devastated the central Philippines in 2013\u2014are unbelievable in strength and will do structural damage to buildings, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCars fly in Category 5. They literally go airborne,\u201d said Lander, who is working on a post-Soudelor assessment with Chip Guard of the National Weather Service in Guam.<\/p>\n
Increased risk due to El Ni\u00f1o<\/strong><\/p>\n The year 2015 is currently an El Ni\u00f1o year. As of Sept. 10, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s Climate Prediction Center said in its monthly advisory that there is an approximately 95 percent chance that El Ni\u00f1o will continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2015-16 and will gradually weaken through spring 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cThe forecaster consensus unanimously favors a strong El Ni\u00f1o,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n The advisory also stated that \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o will likely contribute\u2026to above-normal hurricane seasons in both the central and eastern Pacific hurricane basins.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Lander, with El Ni\u00f1o, typhoon risks will increase in the western Pacific and that the region should expect more typhoons until January.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they\u2019re forming east we\u2019re not safe,\u201d Lander said. \u201cThey can keep forming far to the east and go through our area all the way through January.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that the risk of a typhoon passing by or hitting the Marianas goes up from 10 percent to 30 percent during a strong El Ni\u00f1o season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt increases the risk, there will be typhoons. Still more will go somewhere, south of Guam, north of Saipan,\u201d Lander said.<\/p>\n On average, about four cyclones on any given year will pass within a 180 nautical miles of any point in the Marianas. This year, Soudelor was already the fifth tropical cyclone to pass the region.<\/p>\n However, after all the tropical cyclones, El Ni\u00f1o also brings with it drought subsequent to its peak.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole Micronesia and Hawaii enter the drought and it could be another epic drought,\u201d Lander said, adding that CNMI and Guam will also be affected.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody dries out after a strong El Ni\u00f1o,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Typhoon Soudelor, the strongest cyclone on Earth so far this year, was only a strong…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[4578,51,7026,67],"class_list":["post-210477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-el-ni","tag-guam","tag-meteorologist-soudelor","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}