Tuesday, May 23, 2023
The authorities in Guam ordered residents in coastal areas to evacuate on Tuesday, a day before Typhoon Mawar was expected to make landfall on the Pacific island with the strength of a Category 4 hurricane.
A typhoon warning was in effect on Tuesday afternoon for Guam, a U.S. territory, and Rota, a nearby island, the National Weather Service said.
Guam has a population of more than 150,000 people, many of whom live in coastal communities.
Late on Tuesday morning, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero had ordered residents in the island’s low-lying coastal areas to evacuate by 6 p.m. local time.
The authorities advised all other Guam residents to remain indoors.
By mid afternoon, Mawar had been upgraded to a low-level Category 4, the classification for tropical cyclones with winds of 130 miles per hour or higher.
Hurricane Ian was also a Category 4 when it slammed into Florida in September, killing at least 114 people and leaving a scale of wreckage that was staggering even to Floridians who had survived and rebuilt after other powerful storms.
The eye of Mawar was more than 200 miles southeast of Guam as of early Tuesday afternoon, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, a service operated by the United States Navy.
The intensifying typhoon was moving north-northwest at 8 m.p.h. and would likely pass “very near or directly over Guam” on Wednesday, bringing not only high winds but life-threatening storm surges and two feet of rain to some areas, the National Weather Service said in a forecast.
The biggest impacts of the storm are going to begin Tuesday evening and peak in the overnight hours into Wednesday, said Brandon Bukunt, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Guam.
As the storm approaches the islands, its winds are “going to pick up,” said Mr. Bukunt, and outer rain bands could bring heavy downpours, increasing the chances of flooding, including in Guam, which is home to Andersen Air Force Base.
The authorities said on Tuesday that the base would close its gates at 10 p.m. and that several military facilities on the island were in a “condition of readiness” for the storm.
The difference between a typhoon and a hurricane is in name only, and based on geography. Typhoon is used for tropical cyclones that develop in the northwestern Pacific and affect Asia. Elsewhere, they are called hurricanes.
Typhoons can form year-round but are most common from May to October.
Mawar, a Malaysian name that means “rose,” is the second named storm in the Western Pacific this season. The first, Tropical Storm Sanvu, weakened in less than two days.
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