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Story and words by John S. Callahan
August 19, 2008
The Pacific Ocean covers a vast area of the earth, about 30% of the planet's surface and a larger area than all the world's land masses put together.
This is a water planet and the Pacific is the world's largest body of water.
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There is another area of the Pacific that has a distinct swell season that can produce world-class waves much less familiar to American surfers - the western Pacific, where typhoon season from July to November can produce huge cyclonic storms and powerful groundswells which paste the coastlines of pacific Indonesia, The Philippines, China, Japan, both Koreas, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the islands of the Russian Far East with waves, many of which go unridden. Typhoons generally form in the region of the Western Pacific Warm Pool, a large area north of the equator with some of the world's warmest surface waters. Clearly visible on any ocean surface temperature graphic, warm surface water is essential to the formation of tropical storms, the warmer the better. A typical western Pacific typhoon may form in the area south of Guam, then slowly track to the west, building in size and intensity. Ideal conditions include warm surface waters, lack of strong upper level winds, and no previous systems for a week or two. The heavy rain, cloud cover, and churning action from a previous system will cool the surface waters, thus inhibiting the formation of new systems in the same area until the waters have warmed. If everything goes well, and a cluster of thunderstorms associated with a surface low pressure is established, it becomes a tropical depression. Once surface convergence occurs and a positive feedback loop is established, these thunderstorms become unified into one developing system with divergence aloft. Then, the storm will be large enough to start to spin counter-clockwise in response to the Coriolis Effect of the earth's rotation; and when winds exceed 74 mph, a Category 1 Typhoon is established and gets a name. The scale tops out at Category 5, known as a Supertyphoon, with sustained winds over 150 mph. They say you can always score if you wait long enough, and that is definitely the case with western Pacific typhoon swells.
As the storm begins to spin, the winds get stronger and begin to blow a fetch, which is what surfers are interested in. In theory, a typhoon can be stationary and produce an equal wind speed and swell-generating fetch in all directions. In nature, this almost never happens for more than a few hours, and a moving typhoon will push swell ahead of the storm; and if big enough and covering enough surface area, a long period groundswell out in several directions. The western Pacific produces the largest tropical storms on the planet, sometimes covering 10 degrees of latitude and on average, twice as big as Atlantic or Caribbean hurricanes in surface area. What matters after a thunderstorm eventually becomes a typhoon is what track it may take, how fast it tracks, how strong the storm gets in intensity, how big in surface area, and how long it lasts. All the factors are important. The track determines where the swell generated by the storm is going, and the intensity and size of the system; along with how fast it moves, determines how much swell will be generated. A slow-moving, intense supertyphoon covering a large surface area on a favorable track arcing through the western Pacific can generate powerful groundswell for as long as two weeks, starting with the islands of pacific Indonesia, then the east coast of many islands in The Philippines, then Taiwan, mainland China, many locations in Japan, and if it goes extra tropical with some power remaining, as far north as Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands before regenerating from a warm-core tropical system to a cold-core North Pacific high-latitude storm - and making more waves. While the typhoons that produce world-class waves for many locations in the western Pacific stay well offshore for their entire duration, many typhoons do not and track into land with devastating results. A typhoon landfall can inflict catastrophic damage from 20 feet of storm surge, high winds, and sustained heavy rain. Every season, entire villages are wiped from the map and many local people are killed in rural areas of The Philippines, China, and Vietnam. Major cities like Manila, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, and Tokyo can be paralyzed for days with closed airports and no electricity after a typhoon impact. As typhoons generally track to the west towards The Philippines, then move north towards Japan, some of the places currently being surfed are Siargao, Catanduanes, and Luzon islands in The Philippines, the southern and eastern coasts of Taiwan, the southern islands of Japan like Okinawa, many spots on the main islands of Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu, and the South Korean resort island of Jeju-do. A powerful western Pacific typhoon can generate waves for many obscure surfing areas, such as the reefs surrounding Morotai and Halmahera islands in North Sulawesi province in Indonesia. If a storm should track north into the East China Sea, the peninsula near Quingdao in Shandong province in China, with many beaches and potential points, would get a significant groundswell. There are countless spots that go completely unsurfed on a major Western Pacific typhoon swell, particularly in areas with few local surfers and difficult access to the coast, like most of the east coast of the Philippines. Japan has hundreds of thousands of surfers who know how to use a forecast, and typhoons are well-documented as a major source of swell. Not so in other places, as computer modeling of typhoon-generated groundswell is rather primitive, and forecasts and related information is sparse, as there are few surfers outside Japan to utilize the data. Few surfers mean many unsurfed waves, but even for well-known locations like Cloud 9 in The Philippines or Shikoku Island in Japan, typhoon season is a matter of hit or miss. Take ten surfers who have made trips to the Philippines or Japan in typhoon season and you will get polarized opinions from "all-time fricken' pumping, dude" to "totally flat, worst trip ever" and nothing in the middle. Typhoons can be maddeningly inconsistent, with no storms forming for weeks in the middle of the season. And, when it's flat, it's exactly that - flat, as in, no waves at all. It's quite similar to the East Coast of the US during hurricane season, unsurfably flat with hot and sticky conditions. It's one thing to have a two-week flat spell at home, but quite another to spend thousands to travel thousands of miles to sit around and sweat and not even take your boards out of your boardbag. They say you can always score if you wait long enough, and that is definitely the case with western Pacific typhoon swells. Wait long enough for a storm to form and send a clean groundswell, and you could be enjoying some of the best tropical surfing conditions on the planet, with days of perfect waves, offshore winds, and no one around. |