Killer storm | Super Typhoon Ioke has reported wind speeds of 300 kph (186 mph)

Wake Island, Northern Pacific, Unincorporated U.S. Territory.

The U.S. Air Force had to evacuate 200 of their Wake Island base residents as Super Typhoon Ioke with 300 kph winds approached (186 miles per hour). While Hurricane John is wreaking havoc on the eastern side of the Pacific in Mexico, Ioke is spinning around in the north western Pacific Ocean and all of us, except those on Wake Island and the surrounding atolls, can count ourselves as lucky to not be anywhere near this killer storm. The current track has Ioke pointed towards Japan but hopefully it will sputter out before then.

Super Typhoon Ioke storm track points towards Japan.

According to the AP on August 29, 2006

“Classified as a Category 5 “super typhoon,” Ioke is expected to extensively damage the U.S. territory when it hits Wednesday with 155-mph winds, said Jeff Powell, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Honolulu.

“This is going to roll up a storm surge that will probably submerge the island and destroy everything that’s not made of concrete,” Powell said.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the Hurricane’s Cousin, the Typhoon, here’s the definition of Typhoon from Wikipedia

“The word typhoon has two possible origins:

• From the Chinese ?? (daaih f?ng (Cantonese); dà f?ng (Mandarin)) which means “great wind.”^[53] (The Chinese term as ?? táif?ng, and ?? taifu in Japanese, has an independent origin traceable variously to ??, ?? or ?? hongthai, going back to Song ? (960-1278) and Yuan ?(1260-1341) dynasties. The first record of the character ? appeared in 1685’s edition of Summary of Taiwan ????).^{[citation needed]}
• From Urdu, Persian or Arabic ??f?n (?????) < Greek tuph?n (?????).^{[citation needed]}Portuguese tufão is also related to typhoon. See Typhon for more information.”