There were two tropical cyclones in the West Pacific this past week. Koni went through the central Philippines as a tropical storm where it dumped heavy rains before becoming a minimal typhoon with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph over the South China Sea. It crossed the island of Hainan then weakened slightly and made landfall on the coast of northern Vietnam. Imbudo meanwhile became a super typhoon with winds of 150 mph before striking the Island of Luzon in the northern Philippines where it did extensive damage and was responsible for at least 9 deaths. Both of these storms were spawned by an intra-seasonal oscillation propogating eastward across the West Pacific ocean.

The TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (MPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center shows the rainfall totals associated with these two storms. Areas of the central and northern Philippines received upwards of 12 inches of rainfall as a result (red areas). Combined the two systems generated a broad area of very heavy rain from well east of the Philippines to the mainland coast (red and yellow areas). White crosses mark the positions of each cyclone as they crossed the western Pacific. Accumulations are for the period 15-23 July, 2003.

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Satellite View	Vertical Slice Through The Eye