Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 235 kph (147 mph) with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph) when it made landfall. By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the U.S., nearly in the top category, a 5.
Jeff Masters exaggerated the wind speeds by 50 MPH and got thousands of news publications to print his lies, which are now the sacred legend of the climate religion.
I am still trying to find credible image evidence of Wikipedia’s current claim that “Haiyan made its initial landfall at the island of Guiuan, Eastern Samar at 4:45 am (local time) 2045 (UTC) packing wind speed of 196 mph (315 km/h), making the super typhoon the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the world.[40][41]”
I am a little confused by the various reports concerning the wind speed. According to satellites, winds were estimated at 195 mph, and there were no planes flying to verify this high wind speed estimate. Upon landfall, Guiuan reported a wind speed of 96 mph before contact was lost. Then, as a cat.5 shown on your website, the city of Roxas (NE of the storm) reported only 22 mph winds, when one would have expected much higher winds. Further, a number of photos seem to show people on the beach, beachfronts not severely damaged, and a number of simple homes still standing. I don’t doubt the suffering here, but I just wonder if 147 mph is still an overblown number. Will there be further clarification as to the exact wind speed, and what does this say about satellites’ abilities to accurately estimate wind speed? Are the deceptive photos partly a time-issue problem, with photos taken during times when the conditons weren’t as bad?
Satellites don’t have any way of determining wind speeds on the ground surface, which are always much lower than at altitude.
The 147 mph is easy to believe looking at the damage now showing from places that were difficult to reach. It’s about what you would expect with a Category 4. The worst damage showing piled up vehicles, etc., looked like tidal surge damage to me. A severe storm can down trees after the ground is saturated. Winds at 195 mph would have flattened every tree and structure in their path and the tidal surge would have gone much further inland. Think EF4 – EF5 tornado damage in that case.
Even the Glenn Beck news anchor fell for the Jeff Masters lie.
Also, the loss of life probably would have reached 5 figures at 195 mph with gusts to 235.
The condition of the coconut palms can provide an idea of a storm’s strength. Light ones would only manage to blow the fronds to one side. A moderate tempest would start to tear some of the fronds off. A powerful one would result in complete defoliation. And the mightiest mothers of all would leave only stumps in their wake.
“Landfall” over a sliver of land like an island isn’t exactly the same as landfall onto a continent. I should think when the eyewall approaches a continent, half of the storm is already over land and has lost its fuel. If the “land” is an island of small size, the leading side of the storm may be sitting on the other side of the island and back over water.
Steven Goddard is an idiot that doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Satellites are the primary classification technique for tropical cyclones, using the Dvorak technique. Three independent evaluations all came up with the maximum Dvorak classification, which is where the Join Typhoon Warning Center got the wind speed. Masters reported winds based on their classification. Anyway just because there was no anemometer on land found the same speed does NOT mean that the classification was wrong. Because (1) wind speeds are typically lower on land and (2) anemometers may not have been placed at the sites with maximum winds.
Goddard is the one lying, not Masters.
What a moron.
Masters compared a Camille 1969 190 MPH reading from a wind gauge which broke at 190 – vs. a 2013 offshore satellite estimate taken two hours earlier.
The Philippine Met Office said that Masters “exaggerated” and that the actual measured surface peak speed was 147 MPH.
Camille had ground speeds greater than 190 (probably 200) and Yolanda had 147 – and Masters claimed that Yolanda was greater.
The damage from Yolanda was not remotely consistent with 195 MPH – many trees on the beach were completely intact.
You are taking a completely indefensible position.
147 mph was in JMA 10-minute wind speed. It is their equivalent of CI8.0 which means 195 mph in 1-minute…. Tacloban was 30-40 km NORTH of the eye and Haiyan was a small storm in terms of RMW (radius of maximum wind). That area had category 3-5 winds which JUSTIFIES the JTWC estimate. You have never tracked the West Pacific ocean before.
Anyhow, the PAGASA {philippines} never said that Masters had exaggerated. They AGREED with him….. Stop telling lies
What did satellites record for the 1896 typhoon which destroyed Tacloban?
“Data from the national weather bureau, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, or PAGASA, showed that Typhoon Haiyan’s intensity – measured by the wind strength at its center and the speed of gusts at landfall – Haiyan ranks at number 7 among the strongest storms ever to have hit the Philippines”, according to this Wall Street Journal article.