1956 Pacific typhoon season

Forty-one tracks, 22 storms

The archive holds 41 systems between 18 January and 30 December, but 19 carry no one-minute wind estimate and never enter the storm count. The site counts a tropical storm when US-agency one-minute winds reach 34 kt during the tropical stage and a typhoon at 64 kt, which gives 22 and 18. Other season lists describe 39 tropical cyclones, 23 tropical storms, 15 typhoons and 3 super typhoons. Its totals mix in systems tracked only by Chinese and Japanese agencies, whose ten-minute wind scale produces lower peaks, so its typhoon count sits below the archive's.

Accumulated cyclone energy in the archive calculation reached 301.5, carried mostly by long-lived intense typhoons. The Fleet Weather Center on Guam named storms across the whole western Pacific. Jean, Lucille and Nadine were new names in 1956, replacing Jeanne, Lois and Nona from the 1952 list.

Spring typhoons from the low latitudes

Typhoon Sarah formed at low latitude on 21 March and became the year's first typhoon on 24 March, peaking at 125 kt the next day. It headed northwest toward the Philippines, slowed and reversed direction on 31 March, and its tropical stage lasted until 5 April, the longest of the year in the archive.

Typhoon Thelma formed on 16 April in nearly the same area and reached 150 kt on 20 April, well before landfall. It struck the Philippines on 21 April with sampled winds of 95 kt over land, passed close to Taiwan on 23 April and continued toward Japan. The Fleet Weather Central in Guam stopped tracking it on 25 April.

Typhoon Wanda and the Zhejiang surge

Wanda began southwest of Guam in late July and moved north-northeast past the Northern Marianas before a subtropical ridge turned it west. Low shear and warm water let it strengthen steadily. The archive gives Wanda peak one-minute winds of 160 kt on 30 July and a lowest pressure of 915 hPa, both the season's extremes, while reconnaissance measured 902 mbar that day. After crossing the Miyako Islands it weakened over the East China Sea and came ashore near Zhoushan on 1 August, with sampled winds of 120 kt over land. Its landfall pressure of 923 mbar was the lowest recorded in China from a tropical cyclone.

A 5.02 m storm surge along the Zhejiang coast destroyed 465 seawalls and 902 boats and flooded farmland, ruining 20,380 tons of wheat. Wanda damaged 2.2 million houses and 38.5 percent of the main roads in Zhejiang, and it killed 4,935 people and injured 16,617 nationwide. Taipei recorded 297.3 mm of rain over three days as Wanda passed north of Taiwan.

Emma, Gilda and Harriet in September

Typhoon Babs reached 100 kt in mid-August and affected Japan and Korea. Charlotte crossed Luzon as a typhoon and struck Vietnam after strengthening to 110 kt in the archive, and Dinah hit northern Taiwan and Fujian before its remnant crossed China and North Korea and dissipated over the Soviet Union on 5 September.

Typhoon Emma peaked at 135 kt on 8 September as it passed Okinawa, then brushed South Korea and Kyushu. Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa measured 1,059 mm of rain in 21 hours on 8 September, and wind damaged runways, hangars and barracks. Eleven marines drowned in a rip current on the island. Flooding killed 34 people on Kyushu, and 42 died and 35 went missing in South Korea, most of them fishermen. It gives Emma's overall toll as 77 dead and damage of more than $8 million in 1956 US dollars.

Typhoon Gilda formed east of the Philippines on 17 September and crossed the islands at Category 1 strength. It then turned north and intensified quickly, reaching Category 5 in the archive on 21 September with a peak of 140 kt, and later came ashore in Taiwan and Fujian with sampled winds of 90 kt over land. Typhoon Harriet followed within days. It peaked at 110 kt on 25 September, and it destroyed 600 buildings and killed 38 people in Japan before a second landfall in South Korea. Across its path it caused 53 deaths and $50 million in damage in 1956 dollars.

An autumn aimed at the Philippines

The last strong storms of the year tracked toward the Philippines. Typhoon Jean reached 130 kt on 20 October and hit the islands at Category 4. The storm the archive records as Karen:Lucille lasted from 9 to 22 November in its tropical stage, peaked at 95 kt and crossed the Philippines as a typhoon before dying in the South China Sea. Olive also crossed the islands in late November.

Typhoon Polly formed on 7 December and peaked at 85 kt on 9 December in the archive. It came ashore in the Philippines, where it dropped 11 inches of rain, killed 79 people and caused $2.5 million in damage in 1956 dollars, and it weakened to a tropical storm over the islands before dissipating.