Super Typhoon Haiyan has made landfall. According to PAGASA, Haiyan came ashore at 4 am local time (20 UTC) November 7, 2013 near Guiuan, on the Philippine island of Samar. At the time, Guiuan reported sustained 10-minute average winds of 96 mph, with a pressure of 977 mb. Contact has since been lost with the city. Two hours before landfall, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center assessed Haiyan’s sustained winds at 195 mph, gusting to 235 mph, making it the 4th strongest tropical cyclone in world history. Satellite loops show that Haiyan weakened only slightly, if at all, in the two hours after JTWC’s advisory, so the super typhoon likely made landfall with winds near 195 mph. This makes Haiyan the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history. The previous record was held by the Atlantic's Hurricane Camille of 1969, which made landfall in Mississippi with 190 mph winds.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2573

Visible loop of Haiyan

http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/westpac/movies/gmsirbbm/gmsirbbmjava.html

Some useful stuff here:

The storm is heading for Vietnam.

I didnt even know about this until now. If this was an Atlantic Hurricane, it would have been all over the news for days

Lucky the eye centre didn't cross over my wife's home town as we have a house there which would not stand this such strong winds.

Certainly making up for that quiet Atlantic hurricane season.

Gusts of up to 230 mph, that's terrifyingly fast.

I've experienced winds gusting to approximately 90 Kts I can't imagine the sustained wind speeds they've experienced.

It looks like an big storm even by Philippines standards. It must be quite an experience to be under the calm of the eye when a short time before you would have experienced some incredible winds and would probably do so again a short time later.

Nick

You wonder just how strong buildings have to be to stand up to that sort of wind - worse than many tornados but will be over a much larger area. Do Filipinos have storm shelters as in the mid-West? If not, the prospects are really bad

They tend to use schools and other public buildings to shelter in which are usually built with concrete walls and provide reaonable protection.

The poor people usually have houses built from  sawali which is a woven material made from bamboo and roofed with nipa from a species of palm tree, These houses will blow/wash away but are relatively easy to rebuild. However they have to be rebuilt every few years anyway because termites eat them. But this storm looks a little different to the run of the mill typhoon that crossses the Philippines.

Nick

Apparently the death toll is only three which is surprisingly - and mercifully - low for such an event. But I'm sure the total will slowly creep up as more details emerges in time.
  Or perhaps their warning/shelter system turned out to be effective.

Looks horrendous , heart goes out to those in it's path

Sustained winds of 200mph just isn't real.

A 1200 mile diameter as reported is also doubtful.imo.

It's a big one for sure,but I would be careful of media hype.(it's not the biggest ever and is not a" super storm" by any meteorological definition)

Sure is another killer though.

Hopefully' sustained aid' can get in quickly when it has passed .

The aftermath looks shocking. I saw the results of floods and a huge slum fire when I was there but sadly this kind of event is something that occurs regularly in the Philippines. They are very resilient people and will soon rebuild their lives much like the Japanese appear to be doing after their tsunami.

Nick

LOL at the Fail. Don't they have any subs down there?

"Winds of up to 235mph and gusts of 170mph left a trail of destruction - triggering major landslides, knocking out power and communications and causing catastrophic widespread damage. Hundreds of homes have been flattened and scores of streets flooded."

Red Cross estimating 1200 killed.

Local government official out there just quoted by Sky as saying death toll could hit 10,000.

THat's just in one area. The pictures are horrendous - entire towns have been flattened.