36 feet at 16 seconds: Super Typhoon Soulik forecast to deliver
Super Typhoon Soulik is currently storming through the Western Pacific generating open ocean swells in excess of 20m or 66ft in the old scale, on a direct path for Taiwan.
Such is the enormity of this typhoon, wind speeds are forecast to gust to 150kts (280km/h) around the centre of Soulik as the pressure bottoms out at a phenomenal 915hPa this evening. Relative to Australian standards Soulik will fall just below the Severe Tropical Cyclone (Category 5) threshold by a couple of knots but its unobstructed path towards Taiwan will result in large and destructive surf from the Northern Philippines, the exposed Chinese and Taiwanese coasts, South Korea, and up to Southern Japan.
Soulik started its life as a weak tropical depression north-east of Guam on Sunday before tracking west across the Mariana Trench. As it continued towards the Northern Philippines it intensified rapidly jumping from a Category 1 typhoon to Category 4 in less than a day, feeding off abnormally warm water in the Philippine Sea. Soulik currently sits only 1,000 kilometres east of Taiwan with all forecasts indicating that it will impact the Northern Taiwan coast Saturday morning while still remaining at Category 4 strength.
The sheer strength and ideal path towards Taiwan is resulting in the production of an enormous open ocean swell which is already affecting the region.
Swellnet's internal wave modelling indicates that the swell impacting the exposed north-eastern coast of Taiwan will be in the 10m range at periods between 13-16 seconds Saturday equating to 30-40 foot storm surf. The Ryukyu Islands in Southern Japan will also see large surf out of the south-east in the 25ft range through Friday.
The surfable parts of the swell will be found in protected spots on the backside of islands out of the wind and full brunt of the swell. And there are hundreds of such islands in the region. The Philippines are an obvious choice with numerous reef breaks set to fire up the large north-east swell, but further into the South China Sea, Hainan Island and the scalloped coast of southern China should receive some rare long-period easterly groundswell. // CRAIG BROKENSHA
PS: Thoughts go out to Clif Evers who lives near Shanghai and surfs the rare waves of southern China whenever they break. And what are Clif's plans as the swell of the year bears down on his coastline? "None. I'm stuck in Sweden visiting the inlaws. Arghhhhhhhhhh..."
Comments
We've been keeping an eye on this bad boy for awhile.
It's very south of me but yesterday there was definitely a little more energy in the water after a prolonged flat spell.
Today we have beautiful long lines of south swell in the head to head and half vicnity. It won't be big up here but it's perfect for a local left reef that fires here during summer.
A mate surfed it for four hours while I'm stuck behind a desk.
get some photos Zenagain
Figured you'd be onto it ZenA. I tuned into a Japanese surf contest at Shonan this morning and the webcast was only showing a small amount of motion in the ocean. Think they were predicting a bit of size there for tomorrow.
It's an amazing system though, real eye candy for the weather nerds, and it will provide swell for a huge swathe of the east Asian coastline.
zen, what your latitude deg up there.
36 deg north udo.
Bloody freezing at the moment though. Day temps are around mid-thirties and the water temp is about 12 deg as a result of upwelling. it's such a shock to the system.
Sorry Welly, no pics but Stu has seen a couple from around my area.
Tomorrow will be the day here. We got about 6ft at 16 secs forecast.
Actually closer to 37 deg. But who's counting? We're in a good spot, open to the big winter north swells and lots of consistent south swells in summer. Water temps the issue, bottoms out at 6 deg in Feb/Mar. We get a month of boardies in September.
Yeah the peak is due today Zen, and jeez 12deg after upwelling! That's bloody tough and similar to the South East of South Australia during summer.
Let us know how it all plays out!
My mate asked me to Taiwan, 2 weeks ago for some interesting surf and a dose of amazing country. I declined as I have work commencements... The images are landing on my computer. Wrong decision this is going to hurt big time. Zenagain luv those scarfs.
Incredibly that tracked as perfectly modelled. Ran straight over Taipei
@ZenA,
How'd you go, get waves? Anyone else out there get waves from Soulik..?
Hey Stu, Thursday/Friday was really good here but not huge. Super long period head to head and half at my local reef and maybe double on the beachies. Saturday dropped right off, down to 2-3ft but some fun ones around and yesterday, we drove around all day looking for a decent wave and settled for an arvo sesh at a beachie up north on the incoming high tide push. It was pretty small by then.
Supposed to be another bump in swell today and I'm just out the door. But not in a hurry, it's a public holiday here 'Marine day' and the hoards will be out in force.
So, in my neck of the woods just fun size and light winds, but way down south I believe they got some pretty meaty surf.