Super typhoon Bopha smashed into the southern Philippines island of Mindanao early this morning with estimated sustained winds of 160 mph and torrential, flooding rains.
Flood waters “rampaged down a mountain, engulfing emergency shelters and washing away an army truck” the Associated Press (AP) reports. The reported death toll from the storm has reached at least 40 people and will likely climb “because several other bodies could not immediately be retrieved from floodwaters” the AP says.
The passage over Mindanao and interaction with land has weakened Bopha. But it remains a formidable typhoon with peaks winds around 100 mph, equivalent to a category 2 hurricane. Tracking through the northern Sulu Sea, it is forecast to continue west-northwest through the west-central Philippines. By tomorrow, it will depart and head into the South China Sea.
Meteorologically, the storm was notable for reaching such a high intensity so close to the equator. Writes the Weather Channel:
Bopha just missed being the closest-to-equator category-five equivalent typhoon on record in the western North Pacific Basin (or any other basin, for that matter), reaching that intensity at 7.4 degrees north latitude Monday morning (U.S. time). Only Typhoon Louise in 1964, becoming a category-five equivalent typhoon at 7.3 degrees north latitude, was closer to the equator.