11 Nov 2013

Heavy rain and flooding threatens Haiyan-hit parts of Philippines

Friday saw one of the most powerful storms ever recorded slam into the Philippines, leaving a trail of devastation and the loss of thousands of lives.

Super Typhoon Haiyan hit central parts of the country with destructive winds of more than 200mph, along with torrential rain and a storm surge that caused severe flooding.

The landscape has been flattened, littered with piles of debris – previously the homes of hundreds of thousands of people before the deadly storm’s arrival.

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After hitting the Philippines, Haiyan weakened to a tropical storm prior to hitting the coast of Vietnam on Monday, local time.

Haiyan may be gone, but the process of dealing with the carnage that’s been left behind is just beginning. And, unfortunately, the threat of more bad weather looms in the coming days.

Tropical depression

Yesterday, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued a tropical formation alert. This was due to an area of thunderstorms north of Papua, Indonesia showing signs of organistation.

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The organisation of thunderstorms is how most tropical cyclones are born, as they become more active and start to swirl around a central point.

Thankfully, having had a look at the weather computer models, this area of thunderstorms doesn’t look like developing into a fully fledged typhoon, although there is a small chance that it could become a tropical storm.

However, the most likely scenario at the moment is that it will remain a tropical depression and drift across central and southern parts of the Philippines during Tuesday and Wednesday.

Heavy rain and flooding risk

Even though the area of thunderstorms will likely remain a tropical depression, it will still have the capability to produce heavy rain across places that were badly hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan on Friday.

It looks as though as much as 75-150mm of rain could fall during Tuesday and Wednesday – especially across more mountainous parts of the archipelago.

Given that the ground is still saturated from the rain that fell a few days ago, more rain will cause the risk of flash flooding return.

Mudslides will be a possibility too, give that the ground has already been made unstable from the impact of Haiyan.

Thankfully, aside from gusty winds in thunderstorms, the tropical depression is unlikely to provide any significant wind issues as it passes over the Philippines.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the tropical depression in the coming days and will update you here on my blog, as well as on Twitter – @liamdutton

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