Supertyphoon Champi track dispute, Nor’easter update, 21 October 26

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Supertyphoon Champi at sunset over the West Pacific this morning is pretty spectacular …

Satellite image of a powerful hurricane near the eastern coast of Asia, showing its spiral structure and surrounding weather patterns.

The huge storm is heading west at the moment, here’s the Joint Typhoon Warning Center track:

Map displaying the projected storm impacts of Typhoon Champi (WP292026) over the East China Sea and surrounding regions, including estimated economic damages and wind swath effects.

The forecast is split. The primary global models all show a landfall on Taiwan, whereas the AI based models (and the JTWC official forecast track shown above) show a sudden curve to the northeast and landfall in Japan. The JTWC intensity at landfall is significantly higher than the consensus intensity as well, with the deterministic models showing a fairly rapid decay. Here are the track models and intensity forecast graphs:

Satellite image showing the projected path of Typhoon Champi as of October 21, 2026, over East Asia, with various weather model tracks indicated.
Line graph depicting intensity guidance for WP292026, with intensity in knots on the vertical axis and forecast hours on the horizontal axis. It includes multiple forecast models indicated by different colored lines, showing predicted intensity trends from tropical storm to hurricane levels.

So instead of man vs. machine, now it’s machine vs. machine, with the human forecasters previously betting the AI was right but are now getting nervous that the AI version of events is a hallucination.

Why the big difference? There is a very strong steering current just to the northwest of Champi. Here are the 500mb (18,000 feet) steering currents:

Weather map showing wind patterns over East Asia, with concentrated high winds indicated in red and orange, and lower winds in blue.

As you can see, there is a very strong jet NW across China pushing towards Japan. But … Champi is a very powerful storm, and there is a weak high over the Taiwan strait. The global models show Champi pushing through that weak area and hitting Taiwan before crossing the strait and hitting the mainland. That’s my bet as well, but the AI versions seem to be having Champi picked up by the jet. We’ll see what happens.

Still watching Invest AL93 just off the US coast. It should remain offshore no matter what, just coastal impacts like waves and some wind …

Map showing the projected storm impacts for Invest AL932026, including peak wind swath areas and estimated economic impacts across the North Atlantic region.
Satellite image showing the Atlantic Ocean with tropical weather disturbances labeled as INVEST AL93 and INVEST EP94, indicating their development percentages of 40% and 90% respectively. Map timestamped 05:35 AM on October 21, 2026.

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