Typhoon Angela

Angela caused PHP 9.33 billion worth of damage across the Philippines and 882 fatalities.

Meteorological history

The monsoon trough that developed Yvette and Zack spawned another tropical depression on October 25 in conjunction with a tropical disturbance that originated in the Marshall Islands. It moved to the west, organizing very slowly, becoming a tropical storm on October 26. Two days later, Angela further intensified into a typhoon, and between October 31 and November 1, Angela rapidly intensified into a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon with 1-minute sustained winds of 285 km/h (180 mph), while the Japan Meteorological Agency reported peak 10-minute sustained winds of 215 km/h (130 mph). It maintained that intensity before gradually weakening as it tracked westward, making landfall in the Philippines on November 2 with 1-minute sustained winds of 260 km/h (160 mph) –still at Category 5-equivalent intensity, becoming the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines since Typhoon Joan in 1970. Angela continued to the west-northwest, where upper-level winds caused it to dissipate on November 7 over the Gulf of Tonkin.

Although the Japan Meteorological Agency, the official Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre of the western Pacific, estimated a minimum central pressure of 910 mbar (26.87 inHg), the JTWC unofficially estimated a central pressure of 879 mbar (25.96 inHg), which would rank it high on the list of most intense tropical cyclones, but still behind Typhoon Tip, the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded. However, Angela is an unofficial contender for world's most intense tropical cyclone. In a study utilizing the Dvorak technique for analysis of post-1987 typhoons, the authors concluded that Angela and Typhoon Gay in 1992 were higher on the scale than Tip. The authors also thought that Angela might have been slightly more intense than Gay, and hence Tip.