Meteorologist: Soudelor should be a lesson

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.

“This should be a lesson on what’s a Category 3, what it can do. But there’s another level, there’s the [Category] 4 then you get into the [Category] 5. That’s an unimaginable level when the winds really are 200 miles an hour,” 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.

Lander said Soudelor should be a wakeup call that there are stronger categories of typhoons that are more destructive and catastrophic.

“It should make people think. What happened here is a solid, very strong typhoon but not catastrophic. It wasn’t up into the [Category] 4, it might just have been touching 4 but its nowhere near 5; it wasn’t a super typhoon. That should make people go, ‘If that was a [Category] 3, what’s a [Category] 4? What’s a [Category] 5?’” Lander said.

Super typhoons or Category 5’s—which Soudelor grew into before it reached Taiwan, and Haiyan that devastated the central Philippines in 2013—are unbelievable in strength and will do structural damage to buildings, he said.

“Cars fly in Category 5. They literally go airborne,” said Lander, who is working on a post-Soudelor assessment with Chip Guard of the National Weather Service in Guam.

Increased risk due to El Niño

The year 2015 is currently an El Niño year. As of Sept. 10, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said in its monthly advisory that there is an approximately 95 percent chance that El Niño will continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2015-16 and will gradually weaken through spring 2016.

“The forecaster consensus unanimously favors a strong El Niño,” it added.

The advisory also stated that “El Niño will likely contribute…to above-normal hurricane seasons in both the central and eastern Pacific hurricane basins.”

According to Lander, with El Niño, typhoon risks will increase in the western Pacific and that the region should expect more typhoons until January.

“When they’re forming east we’re not safe,” Lander said. “They can keep forming far to the east and go through our area all the way through January.”

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 Niño season.

“It increases the risk, there will be typhoons. Still more will go somewhere, south of Guam, north of Saipan,” Lander said.

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.

However, after all the tropical cyclones, El Niño also brings with it drought subsequent to its peak.

“The whole Micronesia and Hawaii enter the drought and it could be another epic drought,” Lander said, adding that CNMI and Guam will also be affected.

“Everybody dries out after a strong El Niño,” he added.