Typhoon 16W (Bolaven), # 9: TCCOR 3 on Okinawa
Published: August 23, 2012
1:45 p.m. Friday, August 24, Japan time: What a way to welcome the high school football season. Osan American at Kadena, scratched, along with scads of other weekend events as Typhoon Bolaven continues its slow, ponderous journey northwest toward Okinawa, with a direct hit in the cards around 5 p.m. Sunday.
Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness 3 was issued at 1:23 a.m. Friday for Okinawa. And it appears as if the island isn’t the only target – the latest Joint Typhoon Warning Center track shows Bolaven skirting the west coast of the Korean peninsula as it charges north through the Yellow Sea.
Worse yet, the latest JTWC track shows Typhoon Tembin, lingering around Taiwan at this writing, doing a loop-de-loop around the south part of the island, then … *gulp* … tracking northeast in Okinawa’s general direction.
As for more immediate concerns, here’s Kadena’s 18th Wing Weather Flight’s latest forecast wind timeline:
-- Sustained 35-mph winds and greater, 8 a.m. Saturday.
-- Sustained 40-mph winds and greater, 8 p.m. Saturday.
-- Sustained 58-mph winds and greater, 5 a.m. Sunday.
-- Maximum 138-mph sustained winds and 155-mph gusts, 3 to 6 p.m. Sunday.
-- Winds diminishing below 58 mph, 11 p.m. Sunday.
-- Winds diminishing below 40 mph, 8 a.m. Monday.
-- Winds diminishing below 35 mph, 6 p.m. Monday.
JTWC forecasts Bolaven to remain a powerful category 2-equivalent typhoon as it roars north into the Yellow Sea, just off Korea's west coast on Tuesday, packing sustained 104-mph winds and 132-mph gusts. It’s forecast to pass some 83 miles west of Inchon around 3 p.m., then make landfall west of Pyongyang sometime Tuesday evening.
Tembin … wow … I’ve seen some strange forecast tracks in my time; this one is hard to figure. It was initially forecast to crash ashore in China and die out, but now … let’s say PST will keep a sharp eye on that as well.
