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Super Typhoon 18W (Jelawat), # 7; Tropical Storm 19W (Ewiniar), # 1

By Dave Ornauer
Published: September 24, 2012

Noon Tuesday, Sept. 25, Japan time: Super now, not-so-super later.

Forecast models are slowly coming into agreement that Super Typhoon Jelawat will curve toward Okinawa after making a brief visit to Taiwan. The question being, how soon that curve will be and how powerful Jelawat will remain. It’s still a good five days away and the specifics are far from clear.

For the moment, Joint Typhoon Warning Center projects that Jelawat will have long ago shed its “super” status but remain a powerful Category 1-equivalent typhoon as it rapidly rolls past Okinawa early Sunday morning. The closest point of approach is projected for 9 miles west of Kadena at 4 a.m. when it will still be packing 80 mph sustained winds and 98 mph gusts.

All of this could change. Keep an eye on PST for the latest.

As for Tropical Storm Ewiniar, it is forecast to remain well off Japan’s east coast as it makes a zig-zag path north, some 250 miles southeast of Narita International Airport at 4 a.m. Saturday. Its forecast path has varied as well. We’ll keep an eyeball on it as well.

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About the Author


Dave Ornauer has been with Stars and Stripes since March 5, 1981. One of his first assignments as a beat reporter in the old Japan News Bureau was “typhoon chaser,” a task which he resumed virtually full time since 2004, the year after his job, as a sports writer-photographer, moved to Okinawa and Ornauer with it.

As a typhoon reporter, Ornauer pores over Web sites managed by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center as well as U.S. government, military and local weather outlets for timely, topical information. Pacific Storm Tracker is designed to take the technical lingo published on those sites and simplify it for the average Stripes reader.