Super Typhoon Knocks Out Weather Sensors

[spindrifter]

By AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press Writer

August 31, 2006, 10:32 PM EDT


HONOLULU -- Typhoon Ioke knocked out Wake Island's weather sensors on Thursday as it lashed the isle with some of the central Pacific's fiercest winds in over a decade, the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters monitoring the 2.5-square-mile atoll's wind and temperature gauges from Hawaii said the instruments blew out as the storm approached with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and gusts of up to 190 mph.

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The Air Force evacuated all the roughly 200 residents of the isolated atoll on Monday before the "super typhoon" neared. Only troops, Defense Department civilian employees and military contractors live on the island.

<snip>

Ioke is the first Category 5 hurricane to develop in the central Pacific since record keeping began in the early 1960s and is the most powerful storm to pass through the region since hurricanes Emilia and Gilma, both in July 1994.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-super-typhoon,0,4968677.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

[hatrack]

1. Interesting! This is really unusual for this part of the world.

:scared:

[spindrifter]

2. There was an earlier super typhoon

that hit China, causing evacuation of about a million people, but it did not start in the E. Pac. as Ioke did. Ioke was a hurricane but now it is geographically a typhoon monitored through Japan rather than USNWS.

[upi402]

3. Wow! That IS heavy weather

Where's Wayne Shorter when you need him>

[salvorhardin]

4. Jamming with Jaco's ghost I like to imagine

[upi402]

5. Pastorious was a monster

bassist

A guy I played in a group with in high school did Donna Lee on his bass and loved Jaco.