Mawar, Hurricane Ida, and other major hurricanes are the same thing: Storms with very strong winds, inland flooding, and sea level rise
As dangerous as Super Typhoon Mawar’s winds will be, it is water that poses the largest risk. Storm surge can remove buildings, vegetation, and anything else in its path.
Mawar intensified as it moved over warm water in the Pacific. Oceans around the world are experiencing record-breaking temperatures this year.
Mawar has rapidly gained strength as it moves toward land. In just one day, it went from a Category 1 storm, with winds that might remove a few shingles, to a Category 4 storm with winds powerful enough to tear away roofs entirely.
Rapid intensifications are more common. There is less time for people to be warned of storms that gain strength quickly. Last year, Hurricane Ian ballooned into a devastatingly powerful storm shortly before hitting Florida. In 2021, Hurricane Ida gained strength right before making landfall in Louisiana.
Typhoons are the same thing as hurricanes and cyclones. Different regions of the world use different words for the spinning storms. Major Hurricane and Super typhoon are the same term. It refers to storms with very strong winds.
The hotter the Earth, the more likely it is that there will be rain. When a storm hits land, all that water vapor falls as rain. Research has already shown that past storms dropped more rain because of climate change.
Climate change makes both storm surge and inland flooding more severe. Storm surge is more dangerous because of sea level rise. The water along the coast is higher than it was in the past, which exacerbates the damage from storm surge. The low-lying island territories of Guam and the Mariana Islands are vulnerable to rising seas.
That process probably won’t start until sunrise. Forecasters tell the AP and the New York Times that storm conditions are expected to linger in Guam until Thursday morning local time.
Guam’s typhoon-mawar-damage-fema-relief was scarier than in 1962, when Lou Leon Guerrero was governor
“If anything, I think that we get more support quickly because of our isolated area, because we don’t have the help of, say, other states bringing other resources to us,” she adds.
She says that she is grateful for the help Biden and FEMA provided, but agrees that Guam’s status isn’t going to change when it comes to relief. She says the agency’s response is comparable to that for other weather emergencies, like hurricanes, in the continental U.S.
She said that anyone who didn’t shelter in a reinforced concrete structure risked serious injury or death. (Building codes have required all homes be made of concrete since 2002, the Associated Press notes.) People living in Guam take these precautions very seriously.
The National Weather Service says that the storm is moving away from the island. As it slowly makes its way northwest, its maximum sustained winds are expected to grow to 140 mph.
The entire island was flattened by the typhoon, and she told Morning Edition that was scariest. “This one, as governor … The safety and protection of our people with these storms is making me more anxious because we know that we have to stay for some time.
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero remembers experiencing Typhoon Karen — the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit Guam, with winds up to 175 miles per hour — in 1962.
A rescue mission in which eight people were taken to a shelter is one thing that she knows of, but she’ll have her first damage assessment after the winds start abating.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177847305/guam-typhoon-mawar-damage-fema-relief
Guam is in the dark: Power System failures, population growth, power shortages, and human dependence on the island’s natural gas
What’s clear is that most of the island is in the dark. Guam Power Authority said in an afternoon update that most of its circuits were without power, and that the island-wide power system was only able to handle about 1,000 of its 52,000 customers.
Williams told Morning Edition that the island was seeing heavy rain, coastal flooding, high seas and downed trees.
“This is not like Florida, where you can drive inland 10 miles, or even drive to Georgia,” she explained. “I mean, the flights shut down yesterday. We’re here and … we’ve got to follow directions, and stay in our homes and go to places with shelter and get away from the water and stay off the roads. Most people do that.
President Biden on Tuesday authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond to the disaster and the U.S. military sent ships away from Guam as a precautionary measure.
FEMA Associate Administrator Anne Bink told NPR’s All Things Considered on Tuesday that the agency had already pre-staged over 100 staff members — including medical professionals and power restoration experts — as well as relief supplies, with more than a million liters of water and 700,000 meals ready at a distribution center in Guam.