(Typhoon Kip, the most powerful storm ever to come ashore in 1979. It has been part of the Bragging Rights argument for years, since some of us were there, a fact of which they remind us any time anything else comes by. Like this morning).
You know the feeling. “Something wicked this way comes.” This wicked one has a name. We have been following the unusual and powerful storm they named “Ian” as it swept across the Sunshine State. The boats are swept from moorings and stacked atop one another in Tampa, and now the east is scouring Jacksonville, leaving that pleasant town slap-happy and behind. Some of us used to live there, and we recall a storm or two that pushed water up the Saint John’s River.
Ian- the current storm- had some of his wrath minimized by the friction of Florida. But leaving the land behind, he has re-intensified over the Atlantic and is- now- smacking into South Carolina.
Marlow’s Coastal Empire is taking the hit from this hurricane now, no longer a “Cat 5” monster, but still fierce enough to put the Chairman’s Bayliner Boat on the roof if we caught a stray gust. Further north, toward us, the Piedmont Police are mobilizing for rain and floods, gathering patrol and rescue vehicles on parking lots above sea level. The authorities are warning those who need to get to the liquor or tobacco stores to do so in short order.
The skies are gray and the clouds are low at Refuge Farm, so there is a certain apprehension that we will share what bashed our friends. Our group of Old Salts has, perforce, been near the waterfront as a component of careers spent partially afloat. We thus have periodically known the force of wind and wave, and are permitted to belittle the present with the portents of the past.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who fled the wrath of nature a few days ago. This storm, for them, will stand as an epic in ferocity. The images transmitted from the hurricane’s path has some of the Fire Ring out by the circle of stones, puffing, while others are hanging and tucking absorbent materials near windows and doors on the bunkhouse.
The Lady in Red says we may get gusts of up to 30 knots once Ian scrubs down over land. That is insignificant to the almost Cat 5 fury it once boasted, but there is nothing quite like storm anticipation for a dash of earnest apprehension.
Splash, Loma and Rocket are tiresome in the waiting period before a storm, since even the prediction of a bad one causes them to smile sardonically and say they have been through THE WORST FRIGGING STORM IN HISTORY, so why are you land-lubbers getting energized about this little one?
As you can imagine, it has become a trifle tiresome after 43 years of hearing about it. We imagine it must have been colorful, in a gray sort of way. The storm they talk about had a short name like our inbound Hurricane Ian: Typhoon Tip. Due to the location in the Western Pacific, it was called a “Typhoon,” but for accuracy, it was the largest and most intense ‘tropical cyclone’ ever recorded. The coincidence with “Ian” is interesting, since it had been the forty-third tropical depression (and third super typhoon) of the 1979 storm season.
That was a year that convinced some of us to think that the climate might be changing. It took several decades to put it in rational perspective and realize that sometimes the weather is savage. Today, Splash made it a drama.
43 years ago, storm warnings were clear. He had been dispatched to the Atsugi Naval Air Station to be prepared to fly one of his squadron’s F-4 Phantom jets to some place out of the way of the storm. Typhoon Tip had started as a disturbance within the low-pressure trough near Micronesia. Tracking north, it intensified mile-by-mile. The English-speaking voices on Armed Forces Radio and Television (AFRTS, or “Ay-Farts”) were getting a little higher in tone with each passing hour.
US Navy Officials in Japan naturally became alarmed and took steps to minimize the damage from a Typhoon with a particular mean streak. In addition to flying jets out of the way, it was deemed necessary to put their host ship to sea to avoid the damage caused by smashing the steel hull against the concrete of the piers at the Yokosuka Naval Base.
After passing Guam, Tip kept up the angry spinning and reached peak sustained winds of 190 knots with a worldwide record-low dea level pressure. At the peak of observed activity, Tip was the largest tropical cyclone on record, with a wind diameter of 1,380 miles. The three Salts who actually rode the ship never saw anything like that, since Tip slowly weakened as it continued a track west-northwest toward Japan. But things were different being in the middle of it and attached firmly to nothing.
Naturally they all had bumped their way up to Vulture’s Row on the 04-level of the carrier’s Island to see how the ship was doing. The flight deck was closed due to sloshing angry waves. The drama was still impressive nearly a half century later, with white water shooting vertically up from the bow on each crash of the waves. That is white water in the vertical transitioning radically to the howling horizontal over a very large ship. It is an impressive phenomenon.
It was a useful memory to have when comparing disasters, and required a consultation on the terms “knots” rather than miles-per-hour. A knot- nautical mile- is longer than a statute land-mile because sailors need simpler things to think about. A ‘knot’ is 6,000 feet, rather than the 5,280 feet we use to calculate things on land. So, 190 Knots of wind out there is actually a little over 218MPH. That is what the three of them claim, anyway, when they start the “you ain’t seen nothinglike what we’ve seen.”
Bragging rights, you know? Waiting for this storm gave them plenty of time to impress on the rest of us the greater horrors they have seen. The rest of us were more impressed by whatever fury Ian has left for us, personally, after having given up a hundred knots for the thirty he might bring here to The Farm.
We respect the memory of 218 knots long ago and honor the survivors. We also have a healthy respect for whatever might wind up here, since it may not be the worst in history, but it will certainly be the most powerful storm today.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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