Typhoon Gaemi whacks Taiwan

As I write this, Taiwan is experienced the effects of Typhoon Gaemi and we’re thinking about what the residents must be experiencing. You wouldn’t want to be there and hope people are doing as well as possible!

KinetiCast suggests that in Taiwan on the order of 20 million will be exposed to hurricane force winds, and around 500 thousand exposed to storm surge. KinetiCast terrain adjusted, 1-minute sustained winds were over 145 mph in some locations with over 2 meters of storm surge in some locations. The economic impacts of Gaemi will be significant with estimates based on forecasts and model guidance ranging up to $90 billion.

Interestingly, as some members of forecast model ensembles suggested, Gaemi did a counter-clockwise loop along the east coast of Taiwan before moving inland. This is not unprecedented as there are past examples that experienced this behavior. You can see an amazing radar gif of the loop put together by Brian McNoldy, Univ. of Miami, Rosenstiel School here.

Fortunately, it seems that Gaemi weakened considerably upon landfall as suggested by infrared satellite observations collected by CIMSS at University of Wisconsin-Madison. We hope this bodes well for the people on Taiwan.

Change in Typhoon Gaemi infrared (IR) image over time shows the storm weakening. Image courtesy of Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies / University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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