Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Proverbial Calm












A sunny day ominously darkens with rainclouds in a matter of minutes, a few hours before super-typhoon "Juan" (international  name: "Megi") makes landfall north of the Philippines. Juan  carried more water than last year's catastrophic typhoon Ondoy, with terrifying 260+km/hour winds. It was appropriately categorized by weather agencies as a "super-typhoon", and turned out to be the biggest storm of the decade. The death toll in Juan's wake was, fortunately, smaller than expected but nonetheless wrought destruction on thousands of acres of homes and cropland. Perhaps we did learn something about disaster preparedness from Ondoy. Or maybe we were just lucky this time? 

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