'Super' Typhoon Ioke Slams Tiny Wake Island (Winds at 220 mph, gusts top 250 mph)

Fox News ^ | August 31, 2006

[HAL9000]

Excerpt -

Super Typhoon Ioke, a Category 5 storm and the strongest to hit the Pacific in more than a decade, slammed into tiny Wake Island Thursday, threatening to submerge the U.S. territory, U.S. Navy weather forecasters said.

The storm, packing sustained winds of more than 220 mph, with some gusts topping 250 mph, came ashore at about 10 a.m. ET, and was slowly tracking west, gaining strength over the warm tropical waters, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported. Wake Island is located about 2,300 miles west of Honolulu.

~ snip ~

[CedarDave]

Excerpt from this link:

Friday, September 1, 2006

Ioke's 'super' winds damage Wake Island weather sensors

By Audrey McAvoy
Associated Press

Typhoon Ioke knocked out Wake Island's weather sensors yesterday as it lashed the atoll with some of the central Pacific's fiercest winds in more than a decade, the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters monitoring the atoll's wind and temperature gauges from Hawai'i said the instruments blew out as the storm approached with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and gusts of up to 190 mph.

The National Ocean Service site showing the sensor readings online displayed a chart with Wake Island readings that suddenly stopped.

The most recent data before the instruments failed indicated Ioke slammed the island with 78 mph winds and 100 mph gusts, said Henry Lau, a National Weather Service forecaster in Honolulu. That was before Ioke's eye passed north of Wake Island, he said.

The Air Force evacuated all of the roughly 200 residents of the isolated atoll to Hickam Air Force Base on Monday before the "super typhoon" neared. Only troops, Defense Department civilian employees and military contractors live on the island.

The Air Force plans to send a plane from Hawai'i to Wake to assess the damage from the air but hasn't announced when the flight will leave.

[CedarDave]

PING to my #121...

[HAL9000]

I saw an article that said it will be Sunday at the earliest before the recon flight.

I haven't seen any more info about "Thomas Cavanaugh" yet.

[Dog Gone]

Good grief. It will take that long for the cloud cover to leave the island? That WAS a big storm.

[TampaDude]

Big? Ioke is a monster! Won't be much left above ground level on Wake.

[TampaDude]

I wonder if it will weaken much before it reaches Japan. Looks like Tokyo might be in the crosshairs.

[skinkinthegrass]

It was the first time the territory was evacuated in nearly 30 years

Glad to hear, the residents, will be safe...
but w/ the island deserted. You watch, the enviros....
will land on the island and claim it. :D

[Tokra]

Even at "only" 150 mph - those winds are approaching the gale force that comes out of Nancy Pelosi's mouth!

[SuperTroll]

Link to BEFORE pictures of Wake Island, from one of the weather forcasters on Kwajalien Atoll...

http://www.mcgrathimages.com/Gallery/Locations/Wake/index.shtml

I work for the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, and spent 3 weeks on the Island shortly before we handed the operations back to the Air Force a few years back...I can assure you if the weather reports are correct, it does not exist in it's former state any longer.

[IonImplantGuru]

I was there once in the 60's. It seemed the whole island was no more than 4 foot above sea level. I'm assuming I must have been there during high tide.

Doesn't really make much difference ...

If no image above, try this link. It shows a total tidal range for Wake Island of only about 1.5 feet, high to low tide.

[Minn]

I got all you one-time visitors beat. I spent two wonderful years of my childhood playing army man in and around bunkers and other assorted war junk on Wake. I often got spanked for walking home from school along the beach instead of the trail I was supposed to take. No TV. No Radio. Absolute paradise for a kid. The place is seared permanently into my brain. Hope it comes out OK.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

I haven't seen any more info about "Thomas Cavanaugh" yet.

Maybe Thomas Cavanaugh has gone the same route as Amelia Earhart or Glenn Miller?! ;-)

[HAL9000]

The story about "Thomas Cavanaugh" on Wake Island is apparently bogus.

It may have all started by "LeeJet" on this page -

http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=88798&start=280&sid=7f44a47047f89fd16f532f7a8a8cfae2

On another page, a "senorpepr" points out some obvious problems with the purported article -

http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=88798&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=380

[ratt]

in case you are curious, the "decade" that they keep mentioning in the articles since there has been a pacific typhoon this large is most likely referring to super typhoon Paka which we took a pretty direct hit from on Guam in '97. there were unnoficial reports of 286 mph winds, but again all the instrumentation ended up in the ocean before any official readings could be obtained.

[Ax]

At Camp Zama, Japan, we got slammed by a typhoon in the late 60s. We were told that the winds atop Mt. Fuji reached 207MPH. It really did a number on the village in which we were living.

[stocksthatgoup]

[Dog Gone]

Looks like it was an intentional internet lie. It didn't seem likely in the first place.

[TampaDude]

I'd say "Leejet" has probably been banned from Storm2K for deliberately posting false info. I read that same AP article on several websites and they are all the same, with none of the text about the "French meteorologist" anywhere to be seen.

I knew it was bogus from the getgo...

[Et in Arcadia Ego]

BUMP for update as Ioke heads towards the Boso Peninsula of eastern Japan...

[Inge_CAV]

"I got all you one-time visitors beat."

I am another one-timer visitor to the Island. Was there for about thirty minutes or so in 1966.