Typhoon Haiyan Continues To Scourge Southeast Asia

jones_supa writes "ABC Australia is reporting extensively about the progress of the Typhoon Haiyan, which has reached the status of being one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded. Over the weekend it has caused severe destruction and misery passing through Philippines with maximum sustained winds of 315 km/h, where the authorities are now struggling to bring relief to areas worst affected, there being 10,000 people dead. The storm is now heading towards Vietnam, where already over 600,000 people have been evacuated. Meanwhile, China announced its highest alert for Typhoon Haiyan as six crew members of a cargo boat were reported missing. Vietnam is likely to be spared the storm's initial ferocity as it has weakened over the South China Sea and is now expected to hit as a category 1 storm, with wind speeds of about 74 km/h, meteorologists say."

Donation link

[JasoninKS]

Certainly a horrible thing and my thoughts go out to those that lost loved ones.

Figured I should post the Red Cross donation link in case anyone is interested:
https://www.redcross.org/donate/index.jsp?donateStep=2&itemId=prod4650031 [redcross.org]

Re:Why the metric measures all of a sudden?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh right, larger numbers are more sensational.

And everyone in Austrailia, the Philippines, and the other countries in the path of the storm use metric units instead of English customary units. But that's a left-wing media conspiracy too.

Re:Time to start talking about climate change

[daknapp]

in the context of these Cat 5 hurricanes and typhoons that are striking all over in increasing frequency.

Um, not exactly.

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/11/us-hurricane-intensity-1900-2012.html

Re: A synonym of "scourge" is "flagellate"

[donscarletti]

Not really, hitting someone with a towel or one of those bdsm nylon play whips is flagellation but hardly scourging. There is an accepted difference in degree between those two words and another even more common verb "whipping", which also means flagellation and is also used to refer to effects of wind. Whipping generally means something that will leave welts, flogging is mostly interpreted to mean something that leaves cuts (cat of nine tails, etc), scourging means something that will tear off strips of skin and is often fatal (see roman practices that lead to the term), as so with the effect of different degrees of storm. This storm ripped buildings out of the ground and killed thousands, ergo, scouring is the right word.

And the Conservative media in the US isn't...

[Anonymous Coward]

covering it at all. I have two Filipino coworkers that didn't even know there was a typhoon until one got a call at work from a family member saying they were safe. As usual, the media only covers things they're paid to cover. The top story today in the Seattle Times was about drug makers. Yesterday it was about Boeing.

Re:A synonym of "scourge" is "flagellate"

[plover]

No, he's intentionally invoking "Muphry's Law." From his link:

Muphry's law is an adage that states that "If you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." The name is a deliberate misspelling of Murphy's law.