'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

'Super-typhoon' approaching Shanghai

The very best of luck to our friends and readers in eastern China as they brace for the arrival of Typhoon Wipha.

Xinhua tells us that,

East China, including the commercial hub of Shanghai, is preparing for what may be the most destructive typhoon in a decade, which is likely to make landfall in Zhejiang Province early on Wednesday.

At 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Wipha's center was about 297 kilometers southeast of Wenling, a coastal city in southwestern Zhejiang, and was accelerating northwestward at 25 km to 30 km per hour, according to the Zhejiang Provincial Meteorological Station...

The "super typhoon" is packing gale-force winds of 198 kilometers per hour at its center, and is likely to maintain its momentum after making landfall, it said.

It has churned up winds of up to 90 km per hour in the coast of Zhejiang. The province has received an average 31.8 mm of rain from 5:00 p.m. Monday to 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, with the maximum rainfall measuring 162 mm in some cities, the station said.

The 4th Assessment Report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued earlier this year, warns us that it is "very likely" that because of global warming there will greater numbers of violent precipitation events worldwide as this century progresses.

So governments had better get used to organizing large-scale and effective mass evacuations of residents from large cities. Governments are the only bodies that can do this.

Here in the US, there is still low confidence that the government can do much better next time around than "Heckuva job Brownie" managed to do in September 2005...

Meantime, very best wishes to emergency planners in China and other East Asian countries as they deal with Wipha.