Hurricane Mawar crawled toward Guam Wednesday afternoon, bringing hurricane-like winds that toppled trees and left much of the US without power, authorities said.
Weather forecasters warned the storm, with the strength of a Category 4 hurricane, is the strongest storm to hit the Pacific island in years and could strengthen Wednesday night. Guam’s Electricity Authority says the island’s grid only supplies about 1,000 of its roughly 52,000 customers, and it’s too dangerous for repair crews to venture out.
Brandon Bukunt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Guam, said Mawar has not officially made landfall on Guam by mid-afternoon and it is unlikely the island will be directly affected. But the storm’s western eye had moved over the island, he added, and residents were already feeling the storm’s strong winds.
In a sign of the storm’s strength, it damaged radar equipment that sent images of the storm to Mr. Bukunt’s office, and the largest tree outside the office collapsed in the driveway.
About 150,000 people living on Guam, an island roughly the size of Chicago about 1,500 miles east of the Philippines, are used to tropical storms. The most recent major storm, Super Typhoon Pongsona, made landfall in 2002 with the strength of a Category 4 hurricane and caused more than 700 million USD in damage.
In recent years, damage and deaths from major hurricanes have been minimized in Guam thanks to stricter building codes and heightened warnings. Wayne Chargualaf, 45, who works at the local government’s housing authority, said in most cases, “We just barbecue, relax, acclimatise” when a tropical storm hits blow over.
But since it’s been so long since Pongsona, “We have a whole generation that hasn’t been through this,” he added. “So a little doubt started creeping into my mind. Are we really ready for this?”
The center of the storm was about 40 miles east-southeast of Guam at about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Weather service said in an update. The storm is moving northwest at about three miles per hour, and its impact is expected to peak in the early evening.
Mr. Bukunt said Mawar had weakened from Category 5, but its maximum sustained winds remained at around 140 mph, about the same as a Category 4 hurricane. Its southern eye is still offshore. , but is likely to bring even stronger winds to the island, along with torrential rains.
“Before we lost our radar, that was where the weather was really nasty,” he said.
President biden declared a state of emergency for Guam on Tuesday night, allows federal agencies to support relief efforts. By Wednesday, the island was firmly in a state of emergency, with an evacuation order, one flash flood warning and suspend commercial airline operations.
And at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, all planes either left the island before the storm or were put into hangars, the Air Force said in an email.
Tropical cyclones are called storm or storm depending on where they originate. Typhoons, which tend to form from May to October, are tropical cyclones that develop in the northwest Pacific and affect Asia. Studies say that climate change has increase in intensity of tropical cyclonesand potentially destructive, because warmer oceans provide more energy to power them.
Mawar, whose Malaysian name means “rose”, is the second named storm in the Western Pacific this season. Firstly, Tropical Storm Sanvuweakened in less than two days.
Carlo Sgembelluri Pangelinan, 42, who sells container homes in a shop in Barrigada Heights, an affluent, hilly residential area near Guam International Airport, said he doubts the storm will be worse than anything. what he’s been through.
However, Mr Pangelinan added, he worries about people without adequate shelter and animals without owners to take care of them, including stray dog.
island population mostly Catholicand the Roman Catholic church in Guam said in a message to parishioners Wednesday that the fear and anxiety that enveloped the island was understandable, in part because Super Typhoon Pongsona left an “impression” hard to fade” that more than 20 years later people can still feel it. Later.
The message read: “There are good things to be found in the midst of storms. “The kindness and concern of people that show up during such challenges is one of them.”
John Yoon, Victoria Kim, McKenna Oxenden And Kim Yu Young contribution report.
