NASA MODIS Image of the Day: August 12, 2012 – Remnants of Typhoon Haikui (12W) over China
After Typhoon Haikui made landfall on China’s Zhejian Province at 3:20 a.m. local time on August 8, the storm quickly weakened to a tropical depression, but the impact of the short-lived storm has proven to be both large and long-lasting. At landfall, Haikui was moving northwest at 10 to 15 km per hour, with winds reported as high as up to 115 km per hour along the coast. The third, and most severe, typhoon to strike China’s eastern coast within a week, Haikui began late on July 31 as a tropical disturbance. According the Joint Typhoon Warming Center (JWTC), on August 4, Haiku reached tropical storm status as it moved westward towards China. By August 6, the storm reached Category 1 typhoon status, but weakened shortly before making landfall. Haiku came ashore as a weakening storm on August 8. By late the next day, the strength had diminished so much that the JTWC issued their last warning for Haikui. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured this true-color image on August 9, 2012 at 2:50 UTC, when Haikui was well inland, and weakening. The clouds associated with the storm, however, still are in the spiral shape of a significant storm, and undoubtedly bringing rain across the region. Since the beginning of August, Typhoons Saola, Damrey and then Haikui brought severe rains to the provinces of China’s eastern coast. According to Reliefnet, the heaviest hit provinces of this triple-typhoon event include Liaoning province in the northeast, Hebei in the north, central Hubei province, southeast Fujian province, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai. As of 9 August, 40 people have been confirmed dead and 13 others remained missing. A total of 2,553,000 people have been forced to relocate and/or are in grave need of daily necessities. Haikui brought a cumulative reported rainfall of 600 mm in Anhui. By August 10, damage assessments estimated 1,500 houses collapsed and 80,000 hectares of cropland were affected by the downpours, with a direct economic loss of 880 million yuan (138.36 million U.S. dollars) in that province alone. Reliefweb reports that in the four provinces most heavily affected, Typhoon Haikui has impacted more than six million people and destroyed 7,561 houses and 388,180 hectares of cropland.
