Twin typhoons spin in the Pacific, adding to active storm season

Twin typhoons spin in the western Pacific, far to Australia's north. Photo from the Himawari-8 satellite.

There’s little sign of a let-up in this year’s unusually active storm season with another two typhoons forming in the north-western Pacific.

Typhoon Goni has been upgraded to a category-4 typhoon and is forecast to reach super typhoon strength later on Monday as it moves to the northwest of Guam. That island is reported to have received about 250 millimetres of rain from the event. Typhoon Atsani, meanwhile has also formed east of Guam, and may fall just shy of the 130-knot mark used to register super-typhoon strength. Its path remains over open water and it may weaken to below typhoon strength before reaching Japan, which lies in its current path.

Axel Timmermann, a professor of Oceanography and researcher at the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) researcher, said Hawai‘i had also been in the sights of an abnormally large number of tropical storms so far this year. The hurricane season typically has three to five such storms a year but the island state has had warnings for that range in just June and July, Professor Timmermann said. The season runs until about October.

Read more about it in The Sydney Morning Herald.