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'Monster' Typhoon Ioke, First Category 5 Central Pacific Hurricane In History, Makes Direct Hit on Wake Island
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'Monster' Typhoon Ioke, First Category 5 Central Pacific Hurricane In History, Makes Direct Hit on Wake Island
By Audrey McAvoy
Associated Press
Typhoon Ioke knocked out Wake Island's weather sensors yesterday as it lashed the atoll with some of the central Pacific's fiercest winds in more than a decade, the National Weather Service said.
Forecasters monitoring the atoll's wind and temperature gauges from Hawai'i said the instruments blew out as the storm approached with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and gusts of up to 190 mph.
The National Ocean Service site showing the sensor readings online displayed a chart with Wake Island readings that suddenly stopped.
The most recent data before the instruments failed indicated Ioke slammed the island with 78 mph winds and 100 mph gusts, said Henry Lau, a National Weather Service forecaster in Honolulu. That was before Ioke's eye passed north of Wake Island, he said.
The Air Force evacuated all of the roughly 200 residents of the isolated atoll to Hickam Air Force Base on Monday before the "super typhoon" neared. Only troops, Defense Department civilian employees and military contractors live on the island.
The Air Force plans to send a plane from Hawai'i to Wake to assess the damage from the air but hasn't announced when the flight will leave.
Forecasters had warned the storm would likely destroy everything on the 2.5-square-mile island that wasn't concrete.
Ioke came closest to Wake Island at about midnight Wednesday Hawai'i time, Lau said.
The typhoon was heading northwest over open ocean toward Japan with winds of 155 mph. It's expected to weaken in coming days, leaving it with winds of up to 120 mph.
Wake Island is a U.S. military refueling and research station about 2,300 miles west of Honolulu and 1,510 miles east of Guam.
Ioke is the first Category 5 hurricane to develop in the central Pacific since record keeping began in the early 1960s.
It also is the most powerful storm to pass through the central Pacific since hurricanes Emilia and Gilma, both in July 1994.
[link to www.honoluluadvertiser.com]
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