In Philippines, Typhoon Koppu has slammed into the main island of Luzon, destroying homes and displacing around 10,000 people. Disaster management officials warned of three days of floods, tsunami-like storm surges and landslides.
Typhoon Koppu, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Lando, is currently a weak tropical cyclone in the Luzon Strait and affecting Luzon. The 24th named storm and the fifteenth typhoon of the annual typhoon season, Koppu is forecasted to continue impacting the Philippines for next week.
Koppu, possibly the second most powerful storm to strike the disaster-prone country this year. Koppu was downgraded to a tropical storm, but remains a deadly threat to the archipelago.
At least 23 people have died and six more are missing since the landfall of Typhoon Koppu (Lando) in the Philippines, while flooding rains continue to lash parts of the country with torrential downpours.
The entire town of San Antonio in central Luzon has been engulfed by flood waters. Rescuers were unable to reach some areas of the inundated town where residents were stranded on roofs.
Flood waters have wreaked havoc in many other towns elsewhere in Nueva Ecija province. The storm came ashore in the early hours of Sunday morning at super typhoon strength, ripping the roofs off buildings and uprooting trees in the coastal province of Aurora.
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A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops in the western part of the North Pacific Ocean between 180° and 100°E. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for almost one-third of the world’s annual tropical cyclones.
For organisational purposes, the northern Pacific Ocean is divided into three regions:
- the eastern (North America to 140°W),
- central (140° to 180°W), and
- western (180° to 100°E).
The Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) for tropical cyclone forecasts is in Japan, with other tropical cyclone warning centers for the northwest Pacific in Honolulu (the Joint Typhoon Warning Center), the Philippines and Hong Kong.
While the RSMC names each system, the main name list itself is coordinated among 18 countries that have territories threatened by typhoons each year. The Philippines use their own naming list for systems approaching the country.