Supertyphoon Bavi passed over the island of Rota, the southernmost island in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. As warned yesterday, the storm took a slight jog to the south and early reports are the eye passed directly over the island, so damage is likely to be extensive from this Category Five storm (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale commonly used in the Atlantic). Here’s the view just as the sun sets (evening in the CNMI, 5:30am East coast time):
Saipan and Tinian also saw hurricane force winds, as did Guam. Saipan and Tinian are still struggling to recover from Typhoon Sinlaku, with many areas still without power. Here’s the TAOS ™ impact swath map using the JTWC forecast track:
Conditions remain favorable for the next few days so while the storm might contract in size as it speeds up, it should remain a powerful storm. Tracking is fairly tight and clustered in the Taiwan and coastal China area in about five days:
Most of the tracks keep it south of Okinawa, but as always worth watching.
This is where I once again rant that we do a terrible job of taking care of our outlying territories, and the infotainment complex has a short attention span in keeping attention on them until the politicians do something about it. If Puerto Rico is largely ignored with their power woes going unaddressed for years after storms, I suppose it’s a bit much to hope for that islands with populations of only a few thousand to get much help, even if they are US citizens. For the price of a couple of Tomahawk missiles the power systems of these islands could have been upgraded by now. Shows where your priorities are, since you keep electing these feckless warmongering oligarchs (that applies to both parties by the way, so don’t get smug). Paraphrasing what an African diplomat told me a couple of years ago, “If we need a new road, we talk to China. If we want someone blown up, we tell the US they have oil.” He laughed, but I suspect he wasn’t entirely joking.
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I agree!!!
Excellent commentary on the state of affairs and the African observation was right on.