Strong winds and high waves hit the eastern Philippines on Monday, with the strongest typhoon ever recorded in April in the Pacific Ocean, killing one person and causing floods in lower settlements, disasters said.
On Monday, the National Weather Bureau issued a warning of strong winds and heavy rains, saying “the destructive wind, which has the force of a typhoon, extends outward to 110 km (68.35 miles) from the center of the storm.”
According to provincial disaster management agencies, more than 100,000 people have been evacuated from coastal areas.
The core of Surigae, or Bissing, as the hurricane is called by the locals, is not expected to touch land. But due to a diameter of 500 km and a wind speed of 195 km per hour, parts of the eastern islands of Samara were affected by floods, and several communities lost electricity.
Experts say the first super typhoon in 2021 portends a busy storm season for the region next year.
“The first signs indicate that the 2021 typhoon season is at least average in activity, and possibly above average,” wrote American meteorologist Jeff Masters in a message on the website of Yale Climate Connections, which reports daily on climatic conditions.
Atmospheric scientists say the data show that storms called typhoons, cyclones or hurricanes in different parts of the world are exacerbated by global warming.
“The fuel for these storms is the warm oceans,” said Anne-Claire Fontan, a researcher at the World Meteorological Organization based in Geneva.
“The global trend is that they are getting stronger, and a higher percentage of the total number of storms will be more powerful.”
A warmer atmosphere contains more moisture, allowing stormy winds to blow more rain. In particular, the water temperature in the western Pacific Ocean is higher than the world average, which makes it a fertile ground for mega typhoons such as Surigao. There are more storms in this region than in any other part of the world, more than 70% of which are at the peak of the season from July to October.
Disaster management officials said a 79-year-old man from the southern Leyte province in the Philippines had been pronounced dead after being hit by a fallen tree and one person missing.
There are about 20 tropical storms in the Philippines every year. Last year, the strongest typhoon of the year, Zhenya, hit the country with wind gusts of up to 310 km per hour, killing 25 people and forcing more than 345,000 people to evacuate.
Taiwan, meanwhile, hopes the storm will bring much-needed rain to ease the drought. However, it is expected to go from Taiwan to the Pacific Ocean, and by the end of this week the rain will pass only in the northern part of the island.