The Philippines is no stranger to weathering tropical systems and typhoons, facing up to twenty typhoons each year. In fact, the island nation happens to sit northwest of the Pacific Ocean’s typhoon ‘breeding ground’, so the Philippines tends to be in the path of the storms as they leave and move northwestward.
Despite regularly being subject to these powerful storms, the Philippines has recently been bombarded especially hard.
Five tropical systems—four typhoons and one tropical storm—have ravaged the nation in the past three weeks. Four of those major storms have made direct landfall over the Philippines, with three of them occurring in the past week alone.
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Tropical Storm Trami was the first of these storms to impact the nation, making landfall on Oct. 24. Trami, which dumped a deluge of deadly rains, caused multiple landslides and widespread flooding.
Typhoon Kong-rey was hot on Trami’s heels as a Category 4 storm on Oct. 31. While Kong-rey didn’t make direct landfall, the storm still caused significant impacts, helping raise the cost of damages to crops and infrastructure to over $241 million USD
Typhoon Yinxeng then quickly formed and made landfall on Nov. 7 as a Category 4 storm, blasting the already storm-battered nation with more floods and landslides.
Only a few days after Yinxeng’s departure, Typhoon Toraji made landfall as a Category 1 storm, prolonging evacuations from the previous storms and forcing new ones.
The most recent of the storms, Super Typhoon Usagi, made landfall on Thursday in the town of Baggao, in the Cagayan province, with wind speeds of 175 km/h—making it a Category 4 storm.
Thousands of residents in the province were forced to evacuate on Thursday ahead of Usagi’s landfall. Many residents who had already evacuated their homes during the previous typhoons have yet to be able to return due to flooding caused by the heavy rains.
159 people have lost their lives from these powerful back-to-back storms, and, unfortunately, residents will not receive any reprieve after Usagi as another storm is already on track to make landfall over the weekend.
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Tropical Storm Man-yi is expected to make landfall at a similar, if not stronger, strength to Usagi, reaching typhoon strength on Friday before making landfall over the weekend.
This unfortunate overlap with Usagi is thanks to an area of high pressure over southern Japan steering Man-yi westward, closely following Usagi’s tracks.
Man-yi is expected to unleash even more rain on areas already inundated by the heavy rains from the past five storms.