Typhoon Maysak on track to slam South Korea
Fearsome Typhoon Maysak began angling toward the southern coast of South Korea on Tuesday, September 1, after swinging through Japan’s Kyushu Islands as the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. Maysak is on track to slam populous southeastern South Korea on Wednesday night local time with sustained winds that could exceed 100 mph, together with a destructive storm surge.
Maysak’s eastern eyewall – the most dangerous part of this storm – passed directly over Japan’s tiny Kume Island on Monday night. A peak wind gust of 54 meters per second (about 122 mph) was reported at Kitihara on Kume Island, which received almost nine inches of rain in 24 hours, according to weather.com’s Jonathan Erdman. Hurricane chaser James Reynolds (@EarthUncutTV) documented shrieking winds and huge waves.
“Happy to report I saw no major building damage on Kumejima which is to be expected, these islands are built for the strongest typhoons,” Reynolds tweeted. “Power is out in many places and lots of cleaning up to be done.”
Maysak is continuing to track toward a potential landfall west of Busan – South Korea’s second-largest city and the world’s fifth-largest port. That track would put the Busan area on the storm’s more dangerous eastern side. Maysak then will angle leftward, taking an unusual course near the peninsula’s east coast that could bring torrential rains and high wind across both South Korea and North Korea and into far northeast China as the typhoon transitions into a strong extratropical storm.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/09/typhoon-maysak-on-track-to-slam-south-korea/
