1955 Pacific typhoon season

Why the 1955 counts disagree

The archive holds 38 systems for 1955, and 16 of them carry no one-minute wind estimate at all. Most of those appear only in Japanese and Chinese records. The site counts a storm when US-agency one-minute winds reach 34 kt during the tropical stage, which gives 22 tropical storms. Longer season lists reach 39 depressions and 31 storms because they also count systems that the Japan Meteorological Agency rated as tropical storms on its ten-minute scale, such as the storms it numbers Two, Six, Twelve and Fifteen through Eighteen.

The typhoon count points the other way. Nineteen of the 22 tropical storms in the archive reached typhoon strength, and ten reached 96 kt or more. American warning agencies of the period often overestimated peak winds, and that many of those estimates do not match the central pressures observed in the same storms. Read the high typhoon share as a feature of 1950s wind estimates, and the archive's accumulated cyclone energy of 245.3 with the same caution.

A New Year's typhoon and a crowded midsummer

Typhoon Violet formed on 1 January and became the year's first typhoon on 4 January with 70 kt winds in the archive, before moving into Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Typhoon Wilda followed in late March and Typhoon Anita in April, and Anita reached 100 kt on 25 April after several rounds of strengthening and weakening. In early June Typhoon Billie also reached 100 kt in the archive, though it hit China as a weak typhoon.

July brought the season's densest run. Typhoon Clara formed near Guam and reached 125 kt on 12 July, and its 920 hPa reading the next day is the lowest pressure in the site's 1955 archive. Clara struck the Japanese islands at Category 4 before it moved on into China. Typhoons Dot, Ellen, Fran and Georgia all formed within ten days of each other; Fran and Georgia each peaked at 120 kt, and Dot reached Japan as a tropical storm.

August produced mostly weaker systems. Typhoon Hope lasted from 3 to 16 August in its tropical stage, the longest-lived storm of the year in the archive, and it swung north past Japan twice at typhoon strength before its extratropical remnant reached southern Kamchatka. Typhoons Iris and Joan peaked at 80 kt, and Joan stayed away from land.

Kate in the Gulf of Tonkin and Louise over Kyushu

Typhoon Kate formed on 16 September and reached 130 kt on 22 September, with a lowest pressure of 930 hPa. It affected the Philippines and China, and made its final landfall between Quang Ninh and Hai Phong in northern Vietnam. A 2021 history of Vietnam's dike system records 31 km of sea dikes eroded or breached, 24,000 hectares of crops destroyed, 7,535 houses swept away and 634 people drowned in the storm-surge flooding. It separately cites the newspaper Cong an nhan dan for 669 deaths and 1,200 injuries in Hai Phong alone.

Typhoon Louise overlapped with Kate. It formed on 20 September, strengthened as shear eased and sea temperatures rose, and peaked at 150 kt on 25 September. An eyewall replacement cycle then weakened it to a lower-category typhoon before it reached Kyushu. It killed 31 people, left 41 missing and injured 241 on Kyushu, with 197,429 people affected by flooding or loss of their homes. On 2 October strong winds from the storm spread a fire through the business district of Niigata, where more than 1,100 buildings burned and no one died.

Typhoon Marge reached 100 kt at the end of September and came ashore in Japan as a tropical storm. In October Typhoon Nora passed close to Japan without making landfall and Typhoon Opal struck Japan as a tropical storm, while a weaker storm in the South China Sea moved into Vietnam.

Two late-year giants

Typhoon Patsy crossed the Philippines as a tropical storm in late November, then strengthened over open water to 130 kt on 2 December before an eyewall replacement cycle began its decline. Ten days later Typhoon Ruth formed near 6°N, 142°E and moved northwest across the Philippine Sea.

The archive gives Ruth one-minute winds of 180 kt at 12:00 UTC on 15 December, the season's strongest wind and one of the highest ever recorded for a typhoon. The figure came from reconnaissance aircraft, and measurements from the 1940s to the 1960s were later judged too high, so Ruth was likely weaker. Its lowest archived pressure, 925 hPa, came on 16 December after it turned northeast, south of Japan, while other records list a much lower 888 hPa. The archive's last tropical-stage observation of the year falls on 18 December, far east of Japan.

The Fleet Weather Center on Guam named the year's storms from four rotating lists, taking names in order without regard to year. Violet, Wilda, Dot and Patsy appeared for the first time in 1955.