Philippine forecasters say Typhoon Rai ‘exceeded all predictions’ as it rapidly intensified

The super typhoon which hit the Philippines, leaving nearly 400 dead, was initially expected to cause only ‘considerable damage’

As with Hurricane Ida, warm ocean water and differing wind speeds near the eye of the storm acted as fuel to whip it up into a more severe event

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A man stands on his damaged house after Typhoon Rai hit Surigao City, southern Philippines. Photo: AP

Published: 4:00pm, 22 Dec 2021

The rapid intensification that turned this week’s Typhoon Rai into the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year surpassed all predictions, forecasters said. Rai left nearly 400 people dead and almost a million displaced.

While it is unclear exactly how global warming is affecting the intensification of such storms, the UN’s climate change agency has found it is “likely that the frequency of rapid intensification events have increased over the past four decades” as temperatures rise.

Before Rai underwent a process of rapid intensification, forecasters at first warned of a storm that could bring “considerable damage”, with winds of up to 165km (103 miles) per hour.

“But the situation evolved very fast,” said Nikos Peñaranda, a forecaster who studies thunderstorms at the Philippines’ national weather bureau. “Our models weren’t able to predict the way the storm intensified, and it exceeded all our predictions.”

In rapid intensification of storms, warm ocean water and differing wind speeds near the eye of the storm act as fuel to whip it up into a more severe event.

In the case of Rai, the storm turned into a Category 5 super typhoon, with speeds similar to when a passenger plane starts to lift off the ground.

When it made landfall, winds of up to 210km/h were uprooting coconut trees, ripping down electricity poles, and hurling slabs of corrugated tin and wood through the air.

A lack of real-time data and case studies of similar storms in the region made it difficult for forecasters to predict just how much Rai, or Odette as the storm is known locally, would intensify, said Peñaranda.