1961 Pacific typhoon season

Twenty typhoons and how they were counted

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center on Guam investigated 69 disturbances in 1961 and issued warnings on 42 of them. It classed 20 as typhoons, 11 as tropical storms and 11 as depressions, and it spent 165 days in typhoon warning status. The 20 typhoons match the site's archive count. The archive counts 26 tropical storms rather than the JTWC's 31, because it uses the best-track one-minute winds during the tropical stage, and several systems the center warned on as tropical storms, such as Susan, carry lower winds in the archive.

Other season lists give 35 tropical storms and an accumulated cyclone energy of 365.6, using other agencies' lists and methods. The site's own archive calculation puts the season's energy at 361.2. By the JTWC's reckoning the monthly spread followed climatology fairly well, though the year's total ran about two typhoons above average.

The JTWC noted that 9 of the 20 typhoons never recurved, which it took as a sign that some persistent circulation feature held them on westward tracks. Aerial reconnaissance was cut back sharply from 1 September. The center said land-based radar on the Philippines, Okinawa, Taiwan and Japan let it skip 37 reconnaissance flights, and its 24-hour forecasts still improved by 13.2 percent over 1960.

An early start and a summer aimed at Taiwan

Tropical Storm Rita formed in January and stayed at sea near Palau. Typhoon Tess became the first typhoon on 25 March, south of Yap, and peaked at 130 kt on 28 March before recurving. Typhoon Alice crossed Hong Kong on 18 and 19 May, and the JTWC reported 4 deaths and 20 injuries there. Typhoon Betty, a 130 kt storm in late May, flooded crops in Taiwan.

Typhoon Cora formed in the South China Sea and moved ashore in Vietnam south of Vinh in late June. Tropical Storm Doris, which the archive tracks for 438 hours, the longest record of the year, crossed into China. Typhoon June struck southeastern Taiwan in early August. The JTWC reported 21.6 inches of rain in the south of the island, 20 deaths in the Kaohsiung and Taitung area and about 15,000 people homeless after the Love River overflowed through Kaohsiung. Typhoon Lorna peaked at 120 kt in the archive on 24 August before weakening into Taiwan and Fujian.

Typhoon Nancy, the season's extreme

Typhoon Nancy developed near Kwajalein and reached Category 5 in the archive on 9 September. The JTWC's best track gave it 185 kt between 11 and 12 September, the highest of 1961, and the center reported 100 kt or more for 8 days. Its aircraft dropsondes measured a sea-level pressure of 882 mb in both Nancy and Typhoon Violet, below the archive's minimums of 890 hPa and 895 hPa. Later analysis judged the wind estimates of that era too high, so Nancy's peak is uncertain.

Nancy passed near Okinawa, where the JTWC reported heavy crop and structural damage but no deaths, then turned toward Japan. It made landfall on southern Japan on 16 September with winds of about 100 mph, far below its open-ocean peak, before the storm raced northeast at up to 55 kt. Nancy covered 4,275 miles under warnings, the longest track and life of any 1961 typhoon.

The JTWC reported 172 deaths, 18 missing and 3,184 injured in Japan. Japan's National Police counted more than 650,000 people homeless, 11,539 homes destroyed and 280,078 flooded, with over 300 ships sunk. The center judged the toll small for a storm that crossed some of the world's most crowded land and credited preparations well ahead of landfall. Japanese officials ranked Nancy sixth among typhoons by deaths; Vera had killed 4,464 people two years earlier.

Pamela, Tilda and Violet follow

Typhoon Pamela rapidly intensified to 155 kt and 910 hPa in the archive on 11 September, then struck eastern Taiwan later that day after weakening. Its landfall winds were about 145 mph. The JTWC called Pamela the fifth typhoon to hit Taiwan that year and the most damaging, with 98 deaths, 27 missing and 964 injured, 52 of the dead at the fishing port of Yilan. Police counted 5,992 houses collapsed and about 50,000 people homeless, with damage over $4 million to crops, land and homes. Typhoon Olga, meanwhile, came ashore near Hong Kong, where landslides caused deaths.

Typhoon Tilda peaked at 140 kt on 30 September, turned west against its expected path and passed about 15 miles south of Okinawa. The JTWC reported at least 11 deaths and more than $6 million in damage to crops, housing and equipment on Okinawa, including four people killed when a house in Naha blew off its foundations. Taiwan's Sky Soldier exercise was called off. Tilda reached China south of Shanghai on 4 October after weakening.

Typhoon Violet moved southwest for about 300 miles before turning northwest, a track the JTWC called unusual. It peaked at 180 kt in the archive on 7 October, then weakened well before it brushed the Boso Peninsula near Tokyo. The freighter Pioneer Muse ran aground on Kita Daito Shima and broke in two, and a helicopter crew from the assault ship Princeton rescued its crew. The JTWC attributed two deaths in Japan to Violet.

Billie's giant eye, Dot and Ellen

Typhoon Billie in late October was the largest storm of the year. The JTWC measured an eye of 120 by 180 miles and 30 kt winds out to about 750 miles, and it compared the circulation with Carmen of 1960. The center doubted Billie qualified as a typhoon in structure, since it lacked a classic eyewall, though its surface winds met the threshold. Typhoon Clara became a typhoon near Wake Island and looped clockwise, the one formation the JTWC counted as out of place.

Typhoon Dot was compact enough that pilots on a trans-Pacific air route found it on 9 November, after it had already become a typhoon east of Guam. It crossed the Marianas and damaged Alamagan, then peaked at 140 kt on 10 November. Dot's extratropical remnant later brought rain to the southwestern United States.

Typhoon Ellen closed the year with a 130 kt peak in the archive on 8 December. Its center passed within about ten miles of northern Catanduanes, where it damaged the Coast Guard Loran station and other property. The JTWC's station log describes damage to nearly every building and vehicle there, with several feet of sand left behind. Thirty-three crew were also lost when a Panamanian freighter sank near the Spratly Islands.