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From Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon, Vongfong easily met that definition, strengthening itself from a moderate tropical storm with winds of 60 mph (95 kph) the equivalent of a major hurricane. Maximum sustained winds are now up to 120 mph (195 kph) and the storm is still strengthening.
This area of the world is no stranger to rapid intensification. Many storms intensify rapidly each year due to the extremely warm temperatures of the sea surface.
But this is the first named storm of the season in the western Pacific.
It didn’t exist until Tuesday, and will now hit the Philippines as the equivalent of a Category 3 or 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Vongfong’s impact
Weather models struggled to forecast the intensity of Vongfong, in part due to the small size of the storm.
Now that the storm has intensified so fast, there is no doubt that it will be more than a rainmaker when it hits shore.
“Very heavy rains, damaging winds and strong storm surges are the main concerns with this storm,” said CNN meteorologist Tom Sater.
“A silver lining to this small storm is that the strong typhoon winds only extend about 25 kilometers from the center.”
While damaging winds will only occur along the storm’s immediate path, heavy rains will have a more widespread impact.
Rain amounts of 100 to 250 mm (four to 10 inches) will impact vast areas of the Visayas and Bicol regions across northern Luzon.
Vongfong will spend Thursday off the coast of Samar province, before making landfall for the first time in the Bicol region, north of Legazpi, on Thursday night local time.
After hitting the Bicol region, the storm will retain most of its strength and move to northeast Luzon on Friday night.
“There is a possibility that the center of the storm will remain offshore,” Sater said. “It is not a great opportunity, but if the forecast moves only 50 kilometers to the east, it would maintain the worst of winds and storms on the high seas.”
Typhoon 2020 slow startnorth
The typhoon season in the western Pacific does not have a definite beginning and end like the Atlantic hurricane season, since storms can form throughout the year.
While the peak of the typhoon season is in the late summer, storms are often named in the winter or early spring due to the warm waters of the Pacific.
This is the eighth most recent start to the season since 1950, according to Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University. The last time we had a later start was in 2016, when the first named storm of the season didn’t come until the first week of July.
The Philippines are in the main breeding grounds of the tropical Pacific. In an average year, the region is affected by eight or nine storms.
Late-onset seasons tend to be a little quieter, but the evidence is weak, according to Klotzbach.
