1966 Pacific typhoon season

Storms that formed far north and wandered

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued 752 warnings in 1966 on 20 typhoons, 10 tropical storms and 8 tropical depressions, and spent 155 calendar days in warning, down from the record 167 of 1965. It judged the year unusual: storms developed farther north than in earlier years, and a flat pressure pattern across the western North Pacific left their tracks scattered and erratic. The center also counted an abnormal number of storms in the South China Sea and 12 that formed within 450 miles of Guam.

The JTWC totals match the site's 30 tropical storms and 20 typhoons, since both use one-minute US warning winds. The JTWC counted 3 super typhoons, storms with winds of 130 kt or more: Kit, Cora and Alice. The site's Category 5 threshold of 137 kt keeps Kit and Cora and leaves out Alice at 130 kt. A 2006 reanalysis by Colorado State University and the US Naval Research Laboratory cut the number of major typhoons from eight to six and removed one Category 5, though the official record kept the original values.

Irma and Judy in May

Typhoon Hester became the year's first typhoon on 10 April near Guam; the JTWC noted that its original center died out south of the island while a second one formed farther south in the same circulation. Typhoon Irma followed in May, crossing eastern Samar on 15 May, strengthening again over the Sibuyan Sea to a peak of 120 kt in the archive, and striking Mindoro and western Luzon. It killed 20 people across the Philippines. On 17 May the ship Pioneer Cebu sailed into the storm near Malapascua Island and sank with 262 people aboard; 122 went down with it and 140 escaped. A second vessel, the Banca Alex, sank off Cebu with 20 of its 80 people never found.

Typhoon Judy crossed southern Taiwan at the end of May. The JTWC traced a second center that formed in the northern Formosa Strait and crossed northern Taiwan at the same time, a split confirmed by station analysis and by the ESSA II satellite. On Taiwan it killed 18 people and destroyed 363 homes, with total damage of NT$373.5 million in 1966 New Taiwan dollars.

Typhoon Kit and the floods in eastern Japan

Kit formed near Chuuk and became a typhoon late on 23 June. It deepened sharply on 24 and 25 June, and reconnaissance measured 914 mb before the lowest pressure was reached. The JTWC gave Kit 170 kt winds, the highest of the year, and a 700 mb height of 2,095 m on 26 June, and its crews met severe hail and turbulence. The archive lists 880 hPa. The 170 kt estimate is likely too high.

Kit weakened as it raced north-northeast and passed about 155 km east of Tokyo on 28 June without a recorded landfall. Its rain still flooded more than 128,000 homes in Japan and collapsed 433. Floodwater shut Tokyo's subway, and the Tokyo to Osaka rail line stopped for 12 hours. Kit left 64 dead and 19 missing in Japan, plus 25 workers who died later of carbon monoxide poisoning while repairing an irrigation tunnel near Utsunomiya.

Midsummer storms on the China coast

From mid-July to late August, storms came close together. Tropical Storm Lola crossed Luzon and made landfall near Hong Kong on 13 July, where one person died. Typhoons Mamie, Nina and Ora followed in the second half of July. Tropical Storm Phyllis, in the South China Sea at the start of August, cut the number of US bombing raids over Vietnam for a short time.

Typhoon Tess reached 90 kt in mid-August and absorbed Typhoon Susan east of Taiwan on 16 August, in the JTWC's analysis; the Japan Meteorological Agency instead tracked Susan north to Kyushu as a depression. Tess dropped 1,104.8 mm of rain on Alishan in Taiwan, where one person died. In mainland China, the flooding that followed killed 81 people, left 12 missing and destroyed 1,384 homes.

Alice and Cora in Okinawa, Taiwan and Fujian

Typhoon Alice formed on 24 August, looped west and peaked at 130 kt on 1 September. It caused one death on Okinawa, where 150 homes were destroyed. North of the island 13 South Korean fishing boats sank, with 12 people killed and 26 missing. Alice struck Fujian on 3 September with a surge that local media called a tsunami; about 40,000 people were left homeless there, and no casualty count survives.

Typhoon Cora peaked at 150 kt on 5 September and crawled past the southern Ryukyu Islands for more than 30 hours. Miyako-jima recorded gusts of 307 km/h, and winds of at least 144 km/h lasted 13 hours; 1,943 of its 11,060 homes were destroyed. No one died there. Cora then killed three people in Taiwan and struck Fujian on 7 September on the heels of Alice. Cora left 269 dead and 52 missing in Fujian, with more than 21,000 homes destroyed.

Elsie's rain and Ida's landfall at Omaezaki

Typhoon Elsie stalled near Taiwan in mid-September after peaking at 115 kt. Yilan County received 1,076.9 mm, its largest single-storm total on record. It killed seven people and caused NT$60.1 million in losses in 1966 New Taiwan dollars.

Typhoon Ida formed on 22 September, deepened fast and reached 100 kt early on 24 September, with an aircraft measuring 961 mb. It made landfall near Omaezaki in Shizuoka Prefecture around 15:00 UTC at that strength, with gusts of 324 km/h at the summit of Mount Fuji. The JTWC listed Ida and Typhoon June, a few days later, as the year's two clear cases of storms racing forward before they became extratropical.

From Kathy to Pamela at Christmas

Typhoon Kathy formed near Kwajalein in October, looped, peaked at 100 kt on 14 October, and headed into the North Pacific. Its extratropical remnant came ashore on Haida Gwaii in British Columbia on 24 October. Typhoon Marie reached 100 kt at the start of November without striking land.

Two late storms hit the Philippines. Tropical Storm Nancy crossed the Bicol Region and Calabarzon on 19 November, killing 32 people. Typhoon Pamela struck northern Samar shortly after 06:00 UTC on 26 December with winds of about 165 km/h, close to its 90 kt archive peak. Pamela killed 30 people, most of them fishermen, and caused an estimated 15 million pesos in damage before fading west of South Vietnam on 31 December.

New satellites and a computer on Guam

In 1966 the JTWC began reading pictures from the ESSA II and NIMBUS satellites through its own APT ground station. Satellite fixes averaged 49 nm from the best track, against 81 nm in 1965, which the center credited to the satellites' direct view of the earth; wind estimates did not improve. A new CDC 3100 computer also let the center print the fix, statistics and verification pages of its annual report by machine for the first time.