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AR GOP Senate Candidate Tom Cotton: Terrorists, Immigrants and Drug Cartels Want to Infiltrate Arkansas

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lawhawk10/08/2014 8:45:09 am PDT

And yet, the strongest cyclone on record - a typhoon in the Pacific is roaring along. Typhoon Vongfong is roaring along. It’s the strongest one since Hayun. Top speeds of 180 mph.

It’s heading for Southern Islands of Japan.

As of 6 p.m. Japanese time Wednesday (5 a.m. EDT Wednesday in the U.S.), the eye of Vongfong was just over 600 miles south-southeast of , moving west-northwest at about 8 mph.

Maximum sustained winds had tailed off a bit, but were still an estimated 165 mph, solidly the equivalent of a , according to the U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

With low vertical wind shear (change in wind speed and/or direction with height), impressive outflow (winds in the upper levels spreading apart from the center, favoring upward motion and thunderstorms) and warm western Pacific water, Vongfong intensified explosively.

According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, Vongfong surpassed Genevieve for the most intense western Pacific typhoon of 2014 by estimated central pressure (900 millibars). On the JMA typhoon intensity scale, Vongfong is the third “violent typhoon” of 2014, following Genevieve and Halong.

Just because the Atlantic basin has been quiet this year doesn’t mean that cyclones (which include hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones depending on where in the world they occur) have not occurred.

It’s global warming for a reason. It’s not merely NYC weather or US weather. It’s the global climate, and it’s reason to worry.

Oh, and that ignores Sandy, which came ashore as an extratropical storm and not as a hurricane, even though the storm was a strong hurricane prior to landfall - and the landfall presented one of the worst storm surges the East Coast has seen.