1953 Pacific typhoon season

Fourteen major typhoons

Nearly every typhoon of 1953 turned into a major one: 14 of the 17 reached 96 kt or more on the archive's one-minute winds. Kit, Nina, Tess and Doris all reached Category 5. Accumulated cyclone energy came to 354.8, and the season ran from 18 February to 21 December in the archive's tropical-stage records.

Other tallies count 24 storms, 17 typhoons and five super typhoons. The extra storm reflects systems such as one the Japan Meteorological Agency tracked in early October without a US-agency wind estimate; the site counts only storms whose one-minute winds reached 34 kt. The super typhoon tally uses a 130 kt threshold, which adds Typhoon Betty to the four storms that crossed the Category 5 line of 137 kt.

Irma in February, Judy and Kit in early summer

Typhoon Irma formed near the International Date Line on 18 February and peaked at 100 kt on 23 February. It slowed and weakened before crossing the Visayas and dissipated near Iloilo on 25 February.

Typhoon Judy formed east of the Philippines on 28 May, reached 120 kt on 3 June and moved over Luzon on 4 June. It skirted Taiwan and then struck Japan. It caused 37 deaths, 56 injuries and 17 missing in Japan, along with 1,802 houses destroyed, about 33,000 flooded and 139 ships damaged.

Typhoon Kit peaked at 150 kt on 29 June east of the Philippines, the first Category 5 of the year, with a lowest pressure of 910 hPa. It had weakened to about 90 kt when it reached Taiwan on 3 July, then moved into China, turned north and went on toward Korea and Japan. Strong winds and heavy rain reached Batanes, where one ship was destroyed and another damaged.

Typhoon Nina and a busy August

Typhoon Nina formed near Micronesia on 7 August and reached 160 kt on 11 August, the strongest winds of the season. Its pressure bottomed out at 885 hPa on 13 August, also the lowest of the year. Nina weakened before its center crossed the coast of China, where the archive records 110 kt on 16 August, and other accounts describe it as a Category 4 at landfall. It then curved north and reached Japan on 20 August as an extratropical cyclone.

The rest of August kept southern China busy. A tropical storm formed west of the Philippines and hit China on 11 August. Typhoon Ophelia reached 100 kt and struck China and Vietnam. Typhoons Phyllis and Rita both reached the Chinese coast as tropical storms, though Rita had peaked at 125 kt on 28 August over open water.

Typhoon Tess floods central Japan

Typhoon Susan peaked at 110 kt in mid-September, and it struck Hong Kong as a Category 3. Typhoon Tess formed in the eastern Caroline Islands at about the same time and stayed weak until 21 September. Its pressure fell from 993 mbar to 900 mbar in six hours on 22 September, the largest such drop for a Pacific typhoon since 1951. The archive records 150 kt and 900 hPa that morning.

Tess weakened as it turned northeast, crossed the Shima Peninsula and came ashore in Aichi Prefecture on 25 September, with archived winds over land near 65 kt. It swerved in its final hours and passed close to Tokyo before becoming extratropical on 27 September. It killed 393 people and left 85 missing.

Alice, Betty, Cora and the loss in Typhoon Doris

Typhoon Viola formed in the South China Sea in early October and reached 100 kt before becoming extratropical on 8 October. Typhoon Alice, tracked by both the Fleet Weather Central on Guam and Japan's Central Meteorological Observatory from 11 October, peaked at 100 kt near Iwo Jima on 19 October; stronger winds near the eye likely went unobserved. The archive gives Alice a pressure of 915 hPa.

Typhoon Betty reached 130 kt on 30 October, hit China and then took an unusual track toward the east. Typhoon Cora crossed the northern Philippines and peaked at 120 kt on 18 November before weakening quickly.

Typhoon Doris formed near 6°N, 170°E on 9 December and spent nearly 13 days as a tropical cyclone. It peaked at 150 kt on 20 December without touching land. Nine people died when a US Air Force PB4Y-2 disappeared on a reconnaissance flight into the storm.