Typhoon Mangkhut Category 5

[Blueringocto_73]

Wow! Don't know why this story wasn't front and center. Apparently it's expected to hit northeast Luzon. That's terrible!

Hoping for the best outcome. Of lesser importance but still important to divers is if this will prevent air travel to the Philippines for those flying in/out of Manila.

 

[D_Fresh]

While I cannot speak for those up in northern Luzon, I can say that here in the south Metro Manila area, we had only some wind and a bit of rain. Nothing any worse than we've already experienced through regular monsoon season. The "talk up" here locally was pretty over blown in my opinion. But apparently, anything north of Bagiao got hit pretty hard. I wish the best for them.

 

[npole]

Apparently it hit hard the north of Luzon, so it didn't touched 99% of most common diving areas in the Philippines.. that's why we didn't heard much about it here on the forum.

 

[Jay]

The coastguard shut down diving in Anilao. They initially permitt shore diving then they stopped that too. Bit of an overreaction.

Edit: and what was super annoying was the emergency alerts coming through on the phone a 3am. (on iPhone it’s Settings/Notifications/ scroll all the way down. ).

Nb. This is just re Manila and south of. Farther north, it’s a very different story.

 

[Blueringocto_73]

It will be interesting for me to see what happens in Puerto Galera by mid October. As it is in close proximity to Anilao (20 miles). Thanks for the info.

 

[flyboy08]

Looked nasty on the news...my thoughts are with the people in the effected area.

 

[Blueringocto_73]

It was extremely bad. In the northern part of Luzon. Good thing it didn't hit further south or the loss of life would have been horrendous.

The homes are not built to withstand hurricanes in general. Just matchsticks.

 

[Centrals]

A very strong typhoon indeed.
Even though it did not hit HK directly but the highest typhoon signal No.10 was hoisted for many hrs because of its strength. No public buses are running today even the typhoon had long gone and as far as I can remember it had never happened before.
No fatality because we are basically a concrete jungle.

 

[D_Fresh]

The coastguard shut down diving in Anilao. They initially permitt shore diving then they stopped that too. Bit of an overreaction.

Edit: and what was super annoying was the emergency alerts coming through on the phone a 3am. (on iPhone it’s Settings/Notifications/ scroll all the way down. ).

Nb. This is just re Manila and south of. Farther north, it’s a very different story.

Yeah, agreed. The alerts were super annoying, but I'm sure they were quite useful to some, so I can live with that.

But yeah, up north was a very different story. I pray for those who lost loved ones and sustained damages. I'm not sure it was any more severe than past typhoons, but it really all depends on how direct of a "hit" the typhoon is to your particular location. Plus, it's the first one to actually make landfall all season long.

But yeah, Manila, Anilao, PG were basically unaffected by the storm itself. Winds were noticeably above average "ambient" winds, but I'm not aware of any real wind damage in these areas.

I'm hoping this is our one and only typhoon to make landfall this year

 

[Scandi Divers]

Yes it looks like around 100 people have lost their lives due to the storm, most of which in a landslide in Northern Luzon. Apart from some heavy rain showers and gusts of wind nothing happened in Puerto Galera. We were under signal 1 for 2 days but a lot of dive shops carried on diving.