An Enormous Super Typhoon Is Barreling Towards The Philippines

[FarCenter]

A category five super typhoon is headed towards the Philippines and expected to make landfall on Tuesday morning local time. It is expected to be the strongest typhoon to hit the country in 22 years.

According to The Weather Channel, Super Typhoon Bopha is expected to create conditions equivalent to a category five hurricane and will be packing maximum sustained winds of 160 mph. Yesterday, the typhoon produced wind gusts of up to 70mph on the island of Palau, which has a population of 21,000 people.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/super-typhoon-bopha-to-hit-philippines-2012-12

[rurallib]

1. nephew's wife is Filipino

praying her family is safe.
Thanks for the tip.

[FarCenter]

2. Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Extremely dangerous Typhoon Bopha is bearing down on the Philippine island of Mindanao as a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds. Bopha completed an eyewall replacement cycle on Sunday and has been steadily intensifying today, and will make landfall on Mindanao in the early morning on Tuesday local time. Mindanao rarely gets hit by typhoons, since the island is too close to the Equator, and the infrastructure of Mindanao is not prepared to handle heavy typhoon rains as well as the more typhoon-prone northern islands. Bopha is potentially a catastrophic storm for Mindanao. The typhoon is following a similar track to last year's Tropical Storm Washi, which hit Mindanao on December 16, 2011 with 60 mph winds and torrential rains. Washi triggered devastating flooding that killed 1268 people. Washi was merely a tropical storm, and Bopha is likely to hit at Category 4 or 5 strength, making it the strongest typhoon ever recorded in Mindanao.

...

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2303

[ananda]

3. I cannot imagine any place not being vulnerable to Bopha.

That's a monster killer storm.

[malaise]

4. This is going to do some serious damage

Weather is a real factor in the poverty of some nations

[bongbong]

5. "strongest typhoon ever recorded"

Get ready for lots more headlines of this type.

Soon TPTB will change the phrase "once-a-century storm" to "once a year storm". Moving the weather-Overton window rightward...

[KoKo]

6. Scary...we have US Troops and Bases in mindanao (Or did in 2008 according to this)

Military denies 'secret US military base'
Submitted by sarah.dase on Tue, 02/26/2008 - 18:35.
in

Military News

Source: Al Jacinto, Correspondent
http://www.navyseals.com/military-denies-secret-us-military-base

Rights group were not allowed to enter US facility inside the western Mindanao command headquarters

ZAMBOANGA CITY: The Philippine military has denied reports by a Filipino fact-finding group that US troops have put up secret bases in Mindanao.

The Citizens Peace Watch (CPW), an umbrella organization of political and human rights groups, said it has confirmed the presence of a fortified US military base inside the headquarters of the Western Mindanao Command in Zam­boanga City. It said the base is the headquarters of the US Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, a unit of the US Special Forces that has been deploying troops to various parts of Mindanao since 2002.

Lawyer Corazon Fabros, of the human rights group, said Filipino soldiers sent her group away after they failed to get permission to inspect the US facility. She said the base has communication facilities and is heavily guarded that even Filipino soldiers are not allowed without a pass.

"The 'visitors' have not only stayed on, they have set up camp in our house and told us—their hosts—to go away," Fabros said in a statement sent to The Manila Times.

She said the US military base stands out and is sealed from the rest of Western Mindanao Command by walls, concertina wire, and sandbags. The actual size of the area it occupies could not immediately be established from the outside. But communication facilities such as satellite dishes, antenna, and other instruments are visible.

US Marines provide protection for the facility; some workers were seen wearing identification cards issued by DynCorp, a controversial US military contractor.

The group said other facilities inside the base were unknown. "What exactly are they hiding here? Why all this secrecy?" asked Amabella Carumba, of the Mindanao People's Peace Movement, a member of the fact-finding mission.

The US military maintains similar facilities in Mindanao where it is assisting and advising Filipino troops in fighting terrorism. US troops were also spotted inside the headquarters of the Philippine Army's Sixth Infantry Division and in Philippine Marine bases in Sulu province and in Mactan Island in Central Philippines. There are American forces in Tawi-Tawi and Lanao provinces.
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---Since 2001, the US—which has more than 700 bases and installations in over 100 countries around the world—has embarked on the most radical realignment of its overseas basing network since World War II.

Part of the changes is the move away from large permanent bases— such as the ones in Subic and Clark—in favor of smaller, more austere, more low-profile bases such as the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines presence in Zamboanga and in other places in Mindanao.

In terms of profile and mission, Focus pointed out that the task force is very similar to the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn, which was established in Djibouti in western Africa in 2003 and which has been described as a sample of the US austere basing template and the "model for future US military operations."

Focus said the Philippines is one of the "nodes for special operations forces" that former Defense Secretary Donald Rusted himself revealed the Pentagon would establish as part of its changes in Asia.

According to Focus' research, the JSOTF-P has not only been involved in the Philippine military's operations in the south, it also represents the new kind of more austere, more low-profile kind of overseas presence that the US has been striving to introduce as part of its comprehensive restructuring of its forward deployment.

Last year, US Embassy deputy spokesman and deputy press attaché Karen Schinnerer admitted the American government commissioned the construction of facilities across Mindanao for US soldiers, but insisted the projects are not permanent military bases.

She said the US construction projects are for "medical, logistical and administrative services" to be used by the American soldiers. She said the structures are not permanent US bases. US troops use the facilities only on a temporary basis for them to "eat, sleep and work," she told The Manila Times.

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/feb/25/yehey/prov/20080225pro1....