A “Katrina” magnitide tropical storm is due to hit India on Saturday.
Severe cyclonic storm Phailin is forecast to strike India as a super cyclonic storm at about 12:00 GMT on 12 October. Data supplied by the US Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest that the point of landfall will be near 18.8 N, 84.9 E. Phailin is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 250 km/h (155 mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher.
According to the Saffir-Simpson damage scale the potential property damage and flooding from a storm of Phailin’s strength (category 4) at landfall includes: Storm surge generally 4.0-5.5 metres (13-18 feet) above normal. Curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failures on small residences. Shrubs, trees, and all signs are blown down. Complete destruction of mobile homes. Extensive damage to doors and windows. Low-lying escape routes may be cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the centre of the storm. Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore. Terrain lower than 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level may be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland as 10 km (6 miles). There is also the potential for flooding further inland due to heavy rain.>
Fatalities may run as high as 10,000 – 15,000 people despite government ordered evacuations. My thoughts go out to the people of the Indian subcontinent in harm’s way.
Fatalities may run as high as 10,000 – 15,000 people
and that’s without a direct hit on any large cities.
For reference, the coast roughly east of Hyderabad.
This is the second super-cyclone in nearly a month – another one went through the Philippines and (fortunately) veered away from Hong Kong before hitting the south Chinese coast in September.
The climate denialists scoffing at the link to unusually severe tropical weather because the Atlantic season – so far – has been mild this year are willfully ignoring what’s going on in the rest of the world. If it’s not happening on the continental US, it must not exist. Idiots.
I thought you can’t say that a storm is stronger, or that any particular storm existed because of climate change.
Only that conditions become more favorable or something similar.
This is true. But the existing of more and more unusually powerful storms is an indicator, and was cited frequently the last couple of years (when the Atlantic had a high number of them) as consistent with climate change models. Now that we’re in a quiet year in the Atlantic, the denialists are crowing about it (even though you can’t correlate the absence of such storms in a single season with lack of climate change effects, either.) But the storms are still happening – just elsewhere on the planet this year.
Those brown folks better not loot.
More seriously, that casualty estimate is terrifying. I hope we are already moving assistance Into position.
I doubt the US can do anything while in shutdown mode.
It’s projected for Orissa. But the funnel shape of the Bay plus the counter-clockwise rotation plus the many river channels of West Bengal will take a surge of water from this storm well upstream there too.
I’ve got family and friends in the area, but they will be OK.
The storm name I learned, is Thai. So it’s pronounced somewhat like pie-leen, except that “h” after the “P” means it is an aspirated “P” sound.
All the way across the wide Pacific and I can still feel the sheer terror. This area has produced most of the worst storms in recorded history. It would seem to be a heavily populated area and I keep remembering how Sandy stalled and just pounded and pounded, with a Cat5 stalling the damage could be unimagineable.