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Tropical Cyclone Nargis


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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset

Nargis continues to weaken and is down to 50kts. It looks quite messy now but JTWC say it's resisting rapid dissipation because the southern portion of the storm has managed to move over water which is giving Nargis some energy. That isn't good in itself because it will probably prolong and enhance the heavy rains over the region. Full dissipation is expected in 24 hours as Nargis pushes more northward away from water and gets torn apart by mountainous terrain.

Edited by Somerset Squall
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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset

Preliminary reports suggest Nargis killed around 350 people <_< . Damage and flooding has being pretty extensive too.

News article

Edited by Somerset Squall
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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset

Thanks for the link Cookie. It's certainly not looking good out there, the report says that the death toll may rise further as "more remote areas are assessed". They don't have another "Sidr" on their hands but there will be difficult times ahead nonetheless.

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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset

Indeed, the 350 was only a preliminary estimate but this has risen dramatically today, and it's really very sad news indeed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24459578?GT1=43001

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Posted
  • Location: Liphook
  • Location: Liphook

The offical government now saying at LEAST 10,000 people dead and that number may rise, a true horrific disaster and one of the worst tropical cyclone disasters ever from the looks of things.

Shocking news but thats what you get for what was likely a 125-130kt cyclone pushes into an area that probably only had limited awareness of such a powerful system was moving in.

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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset

Looks like I was truly wrong and misguided with my comment regarding Sidr from last year, this disaster is as bad if not worse. Just seen coverage on the news and it really hit hard just how bad the situation is, the death toll has risen so sharply and could rise yet further. Nargis was always predicted to be pretty big at landfall but it was the unexpected intensification to something so much bigger that has made things so much worse. Having said that 85-90kts would still be pretty devestating. Let's hope that aid does actually get to the people out there, and not into the wrong hands.

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Posted
  • Location: Western Isle of Wight
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, Storm, anything loud and dramatic.
  • Location: Western Isle of Wight

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7384617.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7384402.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7384665.stm

Three videos from the BBC. That general part of the world so often gets hammered by mother nature it seems.

Volcano's, earthquakes, tsunamis and storms. If it were not for the grave loss of life it would be quite exciting.

One cannot truly imagine the hardship that follows such a storm in such an area.

Russ.

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Posted
  • Location: Tiree
  • Location: Tiree
Looks like I was truly wrong and misguided with my comment regarding Sidr from last year, this disaster is as bad if not worse. Just seen coverage on the news and it really hit hard just how bad the situation is, the death toll has risen so sharply and could rise yet further. Nargis was always predicted to be pretty big at landfall but it was the unexpected intensification to something so much bigger that has made things so much worse. Having said that 85-90kts would still be pretty devestating. Let's hope that aid does actually get to the people out there, and not into the wrong hands.

yes thats what I was thinking as well.

very sad news and fear its going to get worse.

this is the sad truth about hurricane following is this dose sadly happen!

I knew long before I hit that it was going to be a bad storm

what are warning systems like in these countries? I assume pretty poor

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Posted
  • Location: Liphook
  • Location: Liphook

Offical death toll now at 22,000 people, now in the top 12 deadilest tropical systems ever and likely going to break into the top 10 given there could be 50,000 dead from this cyclone.

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Posted
  • Location: London, UK
  • Location: London, UK

The media is still not quite grasping what happened in Myanmar.

Before....

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets...08113.terra.721

After....

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets...08126.terra.721

*you can select a much more detailed 250m resolution at the top of each page.

Now, if you load up google earth, and have a perusal around that southern area, you'll notice pretty sizeable urban areas. Most notably the area just south of Pyapon and Bogale.

There is no land there now. Its water. Large chunks of the coastline are seemingly gone. A number of areas in the size of 20 x 15 miles are missing.

People are talking of 20,000 or so dead.

Stick a zero on that, and you'll get what is possibly even worse a nightmare than the 2004 Tsunami was.

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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset

Thanks for those images Calrissian, truly shocking comparing the two. Things are certainly terrible out there, and temperatures have become very hot again, disease is really a concern because of the lack of clean water.

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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
can someone answer my question? thanks

This article may help Cookie:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/07/...her-Myanmar.php

I think that communication is a problem, the warnings may be there but whether everyone manages to hear them may be a different matter. I think the India Meteorological Department do a pretty good job, but this particular article blames lack of radar for monitoring Nargis, which would have helped a lot obviously. The article also states that powerful cyclones hitting southern Myanmar is reletively rare (1 every 40 years on average), so this may have contributed to lack of preparation.

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Posted
  • Location: London, UK
  • Location: London, UK

Even if they were warned with a 'total destruction is coming' warning from their beloved military generals, do you think more than 1% of the locals would have left?

How would they leave ? They're poor, they have no means to go anywhere.

---

Looking at this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs...sat_myanmar.pdf

and again considering the Sat' pics which clearly show large land areas now missing, how many do you think are still there?

This is worse than the Tsunami.

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Posted
  • Location: Tiree
  • Location: Tiree
The death toll of the devastating cyclone could reach many as 100,000 if humanitarian conditions worsen, American and French diplomats warne
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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
Even if they were warned with a 'total destruction is coming' warning from their beloved military generals, do you think more than 1% of the locals would have left?

How would they leave ? They're poor, they have no means to go anywhere.

Yeah, you're right, there's not much that could have been done or many that could evacuate, Nargis was a very powerful cyclone hitting a very vunerable area. My post would only really refer to a much weaker storm, though I admit better communication of warnings still probably wouldn't save many lives.

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Posted
  • Location: Tiree
  • Location: Tiree
Offical death toll now at 22,000 people, now in the top 12 deadilest tropical systems ever and likely going to break into the top 10 given there could be 50,000 dead from this cyclone.

what would be top of that list?

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Posted
  • Location: Liphook
  • Location: Liphook
I think the India Meteorological Department do a pretty good job, but this particular article blames lack of radar for monitoring Nargis, which would have helped a lot obviously.

Well one of the key problems they had that caused the IMD to really under-estimate the strength was the type of sats they use. If you remember correctly Nargis developed a tiny pinhole eye and the sats that moniter that part of the world simply don't have the resolution to pick up on such small scale features as a pinhole eye. Because the IMD uses these sat.estimates on their intensity forecasts they were just too low because the sat.estimates didnt pick up on the well organised pinhole eye and instead it must estimated using the Dvarok estimate it with a strength of a storm with no well defined eye even though it was obviously way stronger.

This same Sat that doesn't have as high resolution also was WAY too low for hurricanes such as Wilma. Whilst the hurricane hunters found a pressure of 882mbs the Sat estimated the system had borderline cat-3/4 winds and pressure about 935mbs...as you can see it was way out and thats probably what happened with Nargis.

IMO i think Nargis true strength was pretty close to category-5, I think a very good comprasion system would be hurricane Charley in 2004 which was at 155mph at landfall, i think even the JTWC under-estimated the systems strength by a fair bit, if I saw the microwave imagery that I have seen now at the time I'd have called for a landfall strength of 135kts!

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Posted
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, thunder, strong winds
  • Location: Taunton, Somerset
Well one of the key problems they had that caused the IMD to really under-estimate the strength was the type of sats they use. If you remember correctly Nargis developed a tiny pinhole eye and the sats that moniter that part of the world simply don't have the resolution to pick up on such small scale features as a pinhole eye. Because the IMD uses these sat.estimates on their intensity forecasts they were just too low because the sat.estimates didnt pick up on the well organised pinhole eye and instead it must estimated using the Dvarok estimate it with a strength of a storm with no well defined eye even though it was obviously way stronger.

This same Sat that doesn't have as high resolution also was WAY too low for hurricanes such as Wilma. Whilst the hurricane hunters found a pressure of 882mbs the Sat estimated the system had borderline cat-3/4 winds and pressure about 935mbs...as you can see it was way out and thats probably what happened with Nargis.

IMO i think Nargis true strength was pretty close to category-5, I think a very good comprasion system would be hurricane Charley in 2004 which was at 155mph at landfall, i think even the JTWC under-estimated the systems strength by a fair bit, if I saw the microwave imagery that I have seen now at the time I'd have called for a landfall strength of 135kts!

That's a really interesting post KW, thanks for the explanation regarding the satellite images.

As for Cookie's question, wiki says this cyclone was the deadliest (incidently, it was also on the North Indian Ocean):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Bhola_cyclone

Up to 500,000 people died.

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