1979 Pacific typhoon season

A below-normal count with long warning periods

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center rated 1979 below normal, with 28 significant tropical cyclones against 32 in 1978 and a near-record low of 21 in 1977. Five stayed depressions, nine peaked as tropical storms and 14 became typhoons, four of them super typhoons at 130 kt or more. The site's archive agrees on 23 tropical storms and 14 typhoons. It counts 8 major typhoons on its 96 kt threshold and puts accumulated cyclone energy at 277.7. Other season lists give 24 named storms and 12 typhoons, figures that mix agency definitions.

Although the year had four fewer cyclones than 1978, JTWC issued warnings on 149 days, 18 more than the year before, with 38 days carrying two cyclones and 5 carrying three or more. The season also changed how storms were named. Starting with Typhoon Bess, JTWC alternated male and female names, a change agreed at the 1979 Tropical Cyclone Conference.

Alice in the Marshall Islands and a March typhoon

Typhoon Alice began as a disturbance over the Gilbert Islands on 27 December 1978, close to the equator where storms rarely form. It wandered through the Marshall Islands in early January, and on 12 January President Carter declared the islands a major disaster area. The archive places Alice's peak at 110 kt on 8 January. After weakening near Guam, Alice slowed, turned north and reached a second maximum of 100 kt before wind shear broke it apart in mid-January.

Typhoon Bess formed in March, and JTWC counted it as only the third March typhoon in the western North Pacific since 1959, after Tess in 1961 and Sally in 1967. It peaked at 90 kt and recurved without reaching land. Typhoon Cecil followed in April and Tropical Storm Dot in May, and Ellis and Faye formed together at the start of July.

Hope, Irving and Judy in the summer

Typhoon Hope formed southwest of Guam in late July, faded under wind shear and then regenerated as Tropical Storm Gordon crossed the Luzon Strait and fed it monsoon inflow. It peaked at 130 kt on 31 July. Rain as Hope passed through the Luzon Strait killed two people on the Batanes Islands and one on Taiwan. Hope made landfall less than 10 nm from Hong Kong on 2 August with sustained winds of 70 kt and gusts to 110 kt. JTWC reported 3 deaths and more than 258 injuries in Hong Kong, where 17 ships broke their moorings. Other accounts give 12 deaths in Hong Kong and about 100 dead or missing in Guangdong.

Typhoon Irving grew from a large monsoon low east of the Philippines and never tightened into a compact storm. Its strongest winds sat 150 to 200 nm from the calm center, and winds over 30 kt reached 400 nm on its eastern side. Irving peaked at 90 kt and weakened as it reached southern Korea on 17 August, the first typhoon to strike Korea that year. Its rains flooded the country, and official estimates cited by JTWC gave 150 dead or missing and $10 million to $20 million in damage to food and agriculture.

Typhoon Judy crossed Guam as a weak disturbance on 16 August, then deepened 69 mb in 36 hours. Reconnaissance measured 887 mb and three concentric eyewalls late on 19 August. The site's archive records a 135 kt peak on 20 August with a lowest pressure of 910 hPa. Judy passed south of Okinawa, recurved just off the Chinese coast and crossed the Korea Strait as it became extratropical on 26 August. JTWC reported that its rain and wind killed 111 people in southern Korea, flooded more than 8,000 houses and destroyed 57 vessels, in an area Irving had soaked weeks earlier.

Owen in Japan and Sarah's southward loop

Typhoon Owen formed south of Guam and turned sharply north instead of west as forecast, steered by an upper-level trough. It peaked at 110 kt on 26 September, nearly stalled northeast of Okinawa, then accelerated to 24 kt and made landfall near Osaka on 30 September before becoming extratropical. It killed 12 people and injured 83 in Japan.

Typhoon Sarah spun up in the monsoon trough near Luzon in late September and looped over the island in early October. It then drifted south and strengthened to a typhoon while moving southward, which JTWC called unusual. Floods and landslides hit Palawan and the central Philippines, cutting off villages, and JTWC attributed four deaths to Sarah. It reached 110 kt on 10 October after its circulation aligned, then weakened and dissipated over Vietnam on 17 October.

Typhoon Tip sets two records

Tip formed between Truk and Ponape in early October in a monsoon trough that also produced Sarah and Tropical Storm Roger. For several days Roger drew off most of the inflow, and Tip looped and stalled near Truk. Once Roger moved north on 8 October, Tip headed for Guam, passed about 25 nm south of the island on the 9th and became a typhoon soon after. Its pressure fell 98 mb in two days, and on 12 October a reconnaissance aircraft measured 870 mb, which JTWC called the lowest sea-level pressure ever observed in a tropical cyclone. The archive gives the same 870 hPa with a peak one-minute wind of 165 kt.

The new record stood 6 mb below the mark Typhoon June set in 1975. JTWC also measured Tip's circulation at nearly 1,200 nm across, the largest on record. The storm peaked far from inhabited land and weakened as it curved north, passing within 35 nm of Kadena Air Base on Okinawa. It came ashore on Honshu about 60 nm south of Osaka around 00 UTC on 19 October with winds of 70 kt, far below its peak, while racing northeast at 35 to 45 kt.

Japan's farming and fishing industries lost millions of dollars. At Camp Fuji, west-northwest of Yokosuka, floodwater breached a fuel retaining wall and the fuel caught fire. JTWC recorded 68 casualties among the U.S. Marines there, 11 of them fatal. Later counts put Tip's toll across all of Japan at 68 deaths.

Vera's Category 5 peak and Abby's slow start

Typhoon Vera formed in the near-equatorial trough and became a tropical storm on 2 November and a typhoon the next day. It peaked at 140 kt on 4 November, the season's second Category 5 intensity in the archive, and held that strength for about a day. Vera weakened as it neared the Philippines and made landfall north of Tarigtig Point on Luzon on 6 November. The northeast monsoon then pushed the weakening storm southwest across the South China Sea. It killed six people in the Philippines.

Typhoon Abby formed over the Marshall Islands in early December and spent days with its surface and mid-level centers as much as 55 nm apart, dropping below tropical storm strength twice. It finally reached typhoon strength about ten days after forming and peaked at 110 kt on 13 December. Tropical Storm Ben closed the year, and the archive's last tropical record falls on 23 December.