Sorry about the cliff hanger that lasted upwards of an entire year. I feel like than George R. R. Martin leaving readers hanging for 4 years now! Also I have no idea what I was supposed to write about in the follow-up post so I'm not going to bother reprising the post and instead pretend it never happened.
For those of you who were worried about my predicament in the Philippines during Typhoon Ondoy (landed Sept 25th): I'm fine!
In fact, I was 6000 miles away in Oregon so I cheated a bit. I was on a quick business trip in that neck of the woods. I just got back this week to the Philippines and found little lasting evidence of the flood and typhoon but I'm jumping ahead of myself.
From what I hear, Typhoon Ondoy started as a rainy typhoon (as opposed to a windy one or a rainy-windy one) and the flooding was not more than usual. Soon it became apparent (in the worst hit regions) that the flood waters were not going to recede as it continued to rain. In the 24 peak hours some places received 455mm of rain. For comparison San Francisco gets 480mm of rain in a year. Regardless of the flood precautions taken by city planners, you can't move half a meter of rain water fast enough to prevent flooding. And, as you can imagine, most of the cities here were not planned; they just happened.
Ondoy made landfall just opposite Luzon (the main island) of Manila and immediately made a bee-line for the city. For those who don't know: Metro Manila is huge. It's about half the area of Greater LA but with twice the population (20 Million) most of which lives in shanty towns. When it hit these areas the impact was harsh. My written explanation can't be sufficient but these pictures can do it justice.
One thing I have to add is that where I live was never in any real danger. I imagine it was similar to the fires in LA hills the past couple summers. If you were to ask a friend in the area about them the conversation would go something along the lines of:
"Yes, the horizon is glowing orange. And yes, it is raining ash"
"Are you going to evacuate?"
"Why? It's on the other side of LA"
Same thing here.
Thats about all I have on the typhoon except to share this little gem of the current typhoon.
My favorite part of that picture is not the chaotic path the typhoon left behind, but the gall of the forecaster to guess where it will be tomorrow. Imagine the number of incorrect predictions that were made each time with the declaration: "This time we're certain!"
On a side note about shanty towns: Stewart Brand has a good (but fast) TED talk about them that puts them in a completely new light.
