Comments on: Typhoon Fengshen, TWICE!

By: marco

marco — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:51:16 +0000

whoa?! encountered fengshen twice? (manila and hongkong)

By: RSA

RSA — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:34:17 +0000

We were in Manila on the 20th with plans to fly to Boracay for a few days on the 21st. We were staying in a new condo which had no cable TV yet. Lucky for us we had limited WiFi service and was able to watch “Frank” on the computer. So Boracay was out so we stayed in Manila and shopped. At that time the storm was heading west and Manila looked to be out of the way. As I stayed up all night watching the storm change direction we decided to get out of the city. (After the Katrina thing here in the states the last place I wanted to be was in a city when the storm went through.) Our friends loaned us a 4×4 truck and driver. We left the city at 5:30 am with heavy rain and wind blowing 60-70 mph.. What a wild ride!! There was no traffic to speak of so we made good time. By the time we got to Santa Rosa we were behind the storm and things mellowed out. From San Pablo to Lucena the destruction was unbelievable. No banana trees left standing. Streets flooded, power lines and trees laying everywhere. From Lucena to Atimonan was even worse. Now we where seeing collapsed houses and buildings. When we where climbing up the moutain pass there where places completely stripped of vegetation. Even the coconut palms where snapped off. From Antimonan on things got better. By the time we got to Calauag it was hard to tell that a storm had went through other than no power. On thing that amazed me during our drive was the locals. The storm had only passed hours ago, the sun had just came up and they where all smiles, hard at work cleaning up the highway and picking up all the fruit which was laying about. We stayed in Calauag until the 25th and only had power the last few hours we where there. Drove back to Manila on the 25th and it was amazing how much had been cleaned up. Roofs repaired, streets swept and for the most part back to normal. We flew to HK early on the 26th.. The storm had already passed but it was still raining hard and the wind blowing. The landing was a little bumpy. Out plane to the U.S. was delay by a few hours because of “Frank”. When we finally left HK is was another bumpy ride for a while as we flew over “Frank”. This was my first trip to PI and it was amazing. I experienced so many new things in 3 weeks. I even got to observe a cyclone when I was in Quezon, Quezon. What a trip we had. I have some 7 hours of video I need to start working on editing now.

By: danney

danney — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:51:34 +0000

I’m glad we were not badly hit in Sta. Rosa, Laguna. I was awakened around 2:00 am last Sunday wondering who is doing the laundry because the water basins and buckets were moving. Whoah, I went to the patio and saw the basins and buckets moving by themselves due to strong wind.

Some of our banana trees(?) fell and our duhat tree lost some of its branches. My housemaid from Bicol cooked the very young bananas in coconut milk but since the cooked young banana fruit is not a traditional dessert in Laguna, I was not sure of the taste. I even asked her to cook it using the pressure cooker but she told me it will no longer taste like the Bicol version. Oh yes I picked alot of balimbings and apple mangoes off the ground. Very nice treat.

By: kayenne

kayenne — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:17:06 +0000

i suppose we were in some luck, despite meeting fengshen twice as well… we flew to HK on Sunday (6:30am flight delayed until 1:30pm via CX – NAIA power outage, very embarrassing to foreigners!) got to HK with beautiful weather and even caught the fireworks at disney on monday night (fireworks canceled on tuesday). flew back home wednesday morning, just as the worst of the typhoon was about to hit HK (9:30am flight was delayed only for an hour due to weather, but the airport was fully functional).

By: leticia

leticia — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:04:53 +0000

to sonny sj,

glad to hear from you. this would mean that despite your being right where FRANK hit most, you are back unscratched.

by the way, my house is at the beach in nauring, pandan, antique. the barangay you come across before jinalinan, that is coming from pandan.

nice to meet you here at MM’s.

By: sonny sj

sonny sj — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:21:12 +0000

leticia,

Janalinan, Pandan, Antique is exactly where I was last Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

And yes, we did get to buy some of the hotdogs, sold to us by those who got a lot but cannot store it for long, kasi wala nga electricity. As I gathered from the residents, the container vans where the hotdogs and other stuff was loaded, were thrown into the sea to prevent cargo boat from sinking as it was being pounded by huge waves.

By: millet

millet — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:50:41 +0000

MM, check out the building lobbies there for those wonderful contraptions that encase wet umbrellas in plastic. neat! hope you get to enjoy the rest of your stay.

By: mcdl

mcdl — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:48:56 +0000

Hi, MM.
My folks were in Hong Kong two weeks ago, and for the first time since the 1980’s, the streets in the NT flooded til waist deep! Downtown Kowloon over where Nathan Rd meets Granville and Cameron Rds was knee to waist deep! I can’t remember the rains being so bad since way back, when we were growing up there. On the island though, where our condo was, we never experienced the floods, though we did get some terrible lashings from the wind. We lived in HK for close to 7 years from the 80’s to early 90s, and the highest I remember was signal 8 (although, as I child, I had a fiendish wish to see a signal 10 raised!)

By: maddie

maddie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:58:16 +0000

Further to that, I’m not sure what weather data Suplicio uses. But I was checking the above link when Typhoon Frank entered the Philippines. The seas last weekend were on the yellow and red mark. I was very surprised to hear that any ship had left port. :-(

By: maddie

maddie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:54:55 +0000

In addtion to Typhoon2000, the hk and japan sites, here’s a link to wave height data that we always use. It is very accurate, especially if you plan to make a trip to the beach, go sailing, take a cruise, use our inter-island ships, or go diving.

httpss://oceanography.navy.mil/legacy/web/cgi-bin/graphic.pl/metoc/357/21/0-0-1/0

We got this from a US Navy weather site and the wave heights here are so accurate. We even passed this on to Negros Navigation and they’ve been using this since. NN cancelled their trips that fateful day.