Haiyan maintains category-5 strength for 48 hours, including entire Phillipines Landfall

[phantom power]

Holy crap.

After spending 48 hours at Category 5 strength, the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in world history, Super Typhoon Haiyan, has finally weakened to a Category 4 storm. With top sustained winds of 155 mph, Haiyan is still an incredibly powerful super typhoon, but has now finished its rampage through the Central Philippine Islands, and is headed across the South China Sea towards Vietnam. Satellite loops show that Haiyan no longer has a well-defined eye, but the typhoon still has a huge area of intense thunderstorms which are bringing heavy rains to the Central Philippines. I've never witnessed a Category 5 storm that made landfall and stayed at Category 5 strength after spending so many hours over land, and there are very few storms that have stayed at Category 5 strength for so long.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2574

[hatrack]

1. Per Masters, it also seems to have come ashore stronger than Camille at 190 mph

Camille had been the strongest at landfall ever recorded. Maybe not any more.

[dbackjon]

2. With the seas warming, how long will this record stand?

[hatrack]

3. A few years, I guess . . . Wilma is still the strongest Atlantic storm at 880 Mb

Nobody's 100% certain regarding Haiyan just yet but I've seen estimates ranging from 895 Mb to 858 Mb (25.34 inches).

They've had to estimate pressures from satellite data, since there aren't any hurricane observation flights in the western Pacific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Haiyan_%282013%29
http://www.koaa.com/news/super-typhoon-haiyan/