Wake Island update
 

For anyone who was keeping track int he last thread, this is from 1 hour ago on fox news, information was from the last automated transmission from the Navy weather station




'Super' Typhoon Slams Tiny Wake Island
Thursday, August 31, 2006

Super Typhoon Ioke, a Category 5 storm and the strongest to hit the Pacific in more than a decade, slammed into tiny Wake Island Thursday, threatening to submerge the U.S. territory, U.S. Navy weather forecasters said.

The storm, packing sustained winds of more than 165MPH gusting to 190 came ashore at about 10 a.m. ET, and was slowly tracking west, gaining strength over the warm tropical waters, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported. Wake Island is located about 2,300 miles west of Honolulu.

The U.S. Navy evacuated the island's 188 residents on Monday, flying the mostly military personnel and their families to Honolulu. Wake Island is home to a U.S. Air Force base and a scientific outpost, roughly midway between Hawaii and Japan, and serves as a key refueling stop for U.S. military aircraft in the Pacific.

Forecasters expect the monster storm to destroy everything on the island that is not made of concrete.

The low-lying coral atoll also is the site of one of the most well-preserved military battlefields in the world. U.S. forces came under fire from the Japanese at the same time Pearl Harbor was attacked, sparking the U.S. declaration of war against Japan. The wreckage of at least four sunken Japanese warships sit off the coast, and numerous Japanese aircraft and other battle remnants are scattered about the island.

Holy wow....that's insane. Gusts over 250mph?!? Glad I'm not anywhere near that. Looks like it's heading for Japan, but calming down too.

- Justin

Those are tornado winds... 50 miles across. Sheesh.

I am looking right now trying to verify these numbers with NOAA, weather.com is still reporting 155MPH winds.

Yea, Weather Underground is saying 155 with gusts to 190. But that's still crazy....

- Justin

Maybe they meant knots instead of mph. Still one heck of a storm and that island was probably engulfed by the storm surge.

I believe they measure surface winds over a minute period to rate a hurricane as a Category "5" or whatever. You could expect a weather station which is 50-100 feet high to sustain different winds then the surface. Just because it is 155 below 10 feet doesn't mean it isn't 200 at 100 feet. Unfortunately the Hurricane hunters don't go out there so we may never really know exactly what the winds were.

Edit: Navy weather recorded a wave 131 feet high 3 miles from wake's coast. That's laot of water.

http://image.weather.com/images/maps...p7_277x187.jpg

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/mtsat/wcpac/avn-l.jpg

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/mtsat/wcpac/wv-l.jpg

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/mtsat/wcpac/...40_2333ir4.jpg

220Kts would be about 253MPH
-Nick

Fox news just corrected their report to 165MPH Sustained and gusting to over 190MPH, but on a 2.5 mile island that still has to suck ass.

131' tall wall of water :shock:

Friggin 13 story wave coming at you....

- Justin

Purple is never good...never good.

listening to the radio at work, they said that the storm was putting rain at a rate of a foot and hour. i can't even imagine what that looks like. it'
s gotta be like standing inside a faucet.

Air Force is flying surveillance planes there today, I'll let you know if I hear anything

Anything left?

- Justin

:shock:

I haven't gotten any pictures, but I heard the destruction is pretty much the whole island. Navy is landing Engineers there soon

They said the damage wasn't as bad as they expected....

Wake Island before the hurricane:

http://users.ev1.net/~gpmoran/wake2.jpg

Pictures from the Air Force after the hurricane:

http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photo...-0000S-002.jpg
http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photo...-0000S-003.jpg
http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photo...-0000S-001.jpg

- Justin

Wow, lot better than I had expected. They will probably have to condemn a number of the buildings still standing, but still - at least much of it wasn't washed away and the air strip looks functional.

What is it exactly that you do Batman?