Typhoon Mawar sets records in Pacific
The most powerful storm system on Earth in more than two years, Super Typhoon Mawar, is raging through the Pacific, stirring up 70-foot waves amid 200 mph gusts as the atmospheric buzz saw cruises over warm ocean waters.
The meteorological monstrosity could maintain Category 5-equivalent strength for days before weakening upon eventual approach to Taiwan.
The storm passed just north of Guam as a Category 4 on Wednesday, lashing the island with winds in the Category 2 range and flooding rains. Now it’s resurged to Category 5 force and is among the top 10 strongest storms to occur globally since 2000.
Mawar matches the strongest storms ever observed worldwide during the month of May and beats out anything seen globally in 2022. While the storm is a product of natural randomness, it fits into a pattern of more intense storms, and storms more prone to rapid intensification, in an era earmarked by warming oceans and human-induced climate change.
As of Friday morning, Mawar had winds of 165 mph.
Since 1950, only eight typhoons in the West Pacific basin have attained Category 5 equivalent status during the month of May, with winds of 157 mph or greater. Mawar is the ninth.
The U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center assessed Mawar’s maximum sustained eyewall winds Thursday night at 185 mph. Gusts were pegged at 215 mph.
Only one other West Pacific typhoon in the National Weather Service’s database has become that strong during May — Phyllis, which briefly nicked 185 mph intensity on May 29, 1958. In fact, no other storms worldwide have done that during May.
Throughout the year, only 13 other typhoons have reached 185 mph strength since 1979.
Equally staggering is Mawar’s air pressure, which bottomed out around 897 millibars on Friday morning Eastern time. Average sea level air pressure is 1,015 millibars.
Air pressure represents the weight of the air over a given location. Lower air pressure signifies a stronger low-pressure system. The air pressure inside Mawar is equivalent to that atop a 3,000-foot mountain.
That means roughly a tenth of the atmosphere’s air is “missing” from the center of Mawar, spurring the powerful inward suction responsible for the storm’s extreme winds.
Mawar came close to ravaging Guam earlier this week, but a pair of shifts prevented calamity from striking the island.
The storm underwent an “eyewall replacement cycle,” during which the inner radius of maximum winds disintegrates as a new eyewall forms, which led to a brief faltering in intensity.
The storm also skirted north of Guam and entrained a filament of dry air into its circulation, reducing the force of the winds that buffeted Guam.
Still, a gust of 105 mph was clocked at Guam’s International Airport around 7 p.m. local time Wednesday. The airport received 12.3 inches of rain between May 23 and 24, while northern parts of the island topped 27 inches.
Confidence is high that Mawar will continue drifting to the west, but its forward speed and strength remain uncertain.