Publication Date July 7, 2016 | Weather Underground

Nepartak Holding on to Category 5 Strength Just Hours Before Landfall in Taiwan

Taiwan
Radar image of Super Typhoon Nepartak taken at 11:30 am EDT July 7, 2016 (11:30 pm local time in Taiwan.) Image: cwb.gov.tw
Radar image of Super Typhoon Nepartak taken at 11:30 am EDT July 7, 2016 (11:30 pm local time in Taiwan.) Image: cwb.gov.tw

Super Typhoon Nepartak is holding on to Category 5 strength just hours before landfall in southern Taiwan. At 8 am EDT Thursday, the Japanese Meteorological Agency estimated that Nepartak had a central pressure of 900 mb, and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) estimated top sustained winds of 160 mph. Buoy NTU2 (located about 170 km southeast of Taitung, Taiwan) recorded a surface pressure of approximately 897 mb as the eye passed over between 7:50 - 8:20 am EDT Thursday. Satellite loops from NOAA/SSED and NOAA/RAMMB showed that Nepartak had weakened slightly on Thursday morning, with the eye warming and the area of heaviest eyewall thunderstorms shrinking in size...

About 1 - 2" of rain has fallen over Taiwan during the past ten days, so the soils should be able to absorb some of the expected 5 - 15" of rain Nepartak will dump over much of the island. Nevertheless, damaging flooding from the torrential rains of Super Typhoon Nepartak will likely cause tens of millions of dollars in damage to agriculture in Taiwan. The bigger concern for heavy rainfall from Nepartak is in mainland China, though. Exceptionally heavy monsoon rains affected large portions of central and eastern China over the past ten days, bringing rampaging floods that killed at least 140 people since June 30 and caused billions in damage