Hagupit Weakens to a Tropical Storm After Killing 21 in the Philippines

Light to moderate rains are falling in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, as a much-weakened Tropical Storm Hagupit plows west-northwest at 7 mph. Hagupit made landfall in Dolores, Eastern Samar Island, at 9:15 pm local time on Saturday as a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds, and will finally exit the Philippines on Tuesday morning after dumping widespread rains of 10 - 15" across the Central Philippines. Some 2-day rainfall totals from the storm include 17.06" (433 mm) at Catbalogan and 15.55" (395 mm) at Borongan on Samar Island, and 9.14" (232 mm) on Masbate Island. At least 21 deaths are being blamed on the typhoon so far, but rescue workers have not yet reached remote areas that received heavy damage where the typhoon initially made landfall, on northern Samar Island. Satellite loops show a large but weakening tropical storm, with much reduced heavy thunderstorm activity. Nevertheless, Hagupit is still a very serious heavy rainfall threat. The storm's slow forward speed of 5 - 10 mph through the western Philippines will potentially bring heavy rains of 5 - 10" to Manila, with a population of about 12 million, causing serious flooding. However, it appears that the Philippines have avoided a major catastrophe on the scale of last year's Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left over 7,300 people dead or missing.


Figure 1. Flooding is seen in Barangay Tarabucan, Calbayog City, Samar, Dec. 7, 2014. (Fritz Pedrosa Tamondong/The Calbayog Journal) 


Figure 2. MODIS satellite image of Typhoon Hagupit over the Central Philippines at 04:50 UTC on Monday December 8, 2014. At the time, Hagupit had top winds of 60 mph. Image credit: NASA.


Figure 3. Predicted precipitation from Tropical Storm Hagupit from the 06 UTC Monday run of the GFDL hurricane model. Widespread areas of 8 - 16" (yellow colors) were predicted over the Manila metropolitan area, with some areas of 16+ inches predicted near where the storm makes landfall in Vietnam. Image credit: NOAA/GFDL.


Figure 4. Tropical Storm Hagupit over the Philippines as seen at 10 pm EST Sunday December 7, 2014 from the International Space Station. At the time, Hagupit had top winds of 70 mph. Image credit: Terry Virts.

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