2019 Pacific typhoon season

Season overview

Forecasters expected a slightly busy year. In May, Tropical Storm Risk called for 27 tropical storms, 17 typhoons and 10 intense typhoons, partly because a moderate El Niño looked possible later in the year, against a 1965 to 2018 average of 26, 16 and 9. The El Niño never strengthened: the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted slight warm anomalies in the equatorial Pacific early in the year and a return to neutral conditions by summer, and by August Tropical Storm Risk had trimmed its outlook to a near-normal 26 tropical storms, 16 typhoons and 8 intense typhoons.

The year ended close to those numbers. JTWC described 2019 as a return to near-average activity after the very busy 2018 season, though with several spells when three or more cyclones were active at once. The season's accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) came to 266.4 on the site's measure, below the 1965 to 2018 average of 295 used by Tropical Storm Risk, and JTWC likewise found the basin's ACE below its 19-year mean. The year's significance lay less in its totals than in where its strongest storms went: damage from Typhoon Lekima and Typhoon Hagibis helped make 2019 the costliest Pacific typhoon season on record at the time.

How the season unfolded

The archive's first system was a depression that formed on 4 January and lingered for more than 18 days as it drifted west toward the Philippines, the longest-lived track of the year without ever reaching tropical storm strength. Typhoon Wutip followed in February, becoming the first typhoon on 21 February and peaking at Category 5 intensity southwest of Guam two days later. A short-lived tropical storm in mid-March was the only other system of note before a long lull that lasted until late June.

Activity resumed slowly. In late June a hybrid system that the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) named Sepat brushed southern Honshu, and in July four tropical storms, Mun, Danas, Nari and Wipha, affected southern China, Japan and Vietnam without any of them reaching typhoon strength, an unusual gap for July. The pace changed in early August, when Typhoon Francisco, Typhoon Lekima and Typhoon Krosa were active at the same time.

From then on the basin stayed busy. Typhoon Lingling, Typhoon Tapah and Typhoon Mitag tracked north toward the Ryukyu Islands, Korea and eastern China in September. October brought three powerful storms in quick succession: Typhoon Hagibis, Typhoon Neoguri and Typhoon Bualoi, followed at the end of the month by Matmo, which crossed Vietnam and whose remnants redeveloped over the Bay of Bengal as Cyclone Bulbul. The archive tracks the two as one storm, and its 105 kt peak on 9 November comes from the Bulbul stage.

November was the busiest month of the year, with six named storms, the most for the month since 1991. Typhoon Halong, Typhoon Nakri, Typhoon Fengshen, Typhoon Kalmaegi and Typhoon Fung-Wong all formed in the first three weeks, and Typhoon Kammuri developed southeast of Guam on 24 November before reaching the Philippines in early December. Typhoon Phanfone closed the season, with its last tropical observation on 28 December.

Strongest storms

Four storms reached Category 5, spread across the year from February to November. Typhoon Wutip peaked at 145 kt with a pressure of 895 hPa on 23 February, the strongest February typhoon on record. Typhoon Hagibis peaked at 160 kt and 890 hPa on 7 October near the Northern Mariana Islands after one of the most striking bursts of the year: JTWC assessed a 125 kt increase over 42 hours, including 100 kt in only 22 hours, close to a record rate. Typhoon Bualoi, which formed east of the Marshall Islands, reached 140 kt on 22 October over open water.

Typhoon Halong was the strongest of all. It formed east of the Northern Mariana Islands in early November, intensified explosively, and peaked at 165 kt with a minimum pressure of 888 hPa on 5 November, the highest one-minute wind estimated for any tropical cyclone worldwide in 2019. Halong stayed over the open ocean, weakening through an eyewall replacement, cooler water and dry air before becoming extratropical.

Below the Category 5 group, Typhoon Lekima peaked at 135 kt on 8 August east of Taiwan, while Typhoon Lingling and Typhoon Kammuri each reached 120 kt and Typhoon Fengshen 115 kt. In all, 11 storms reached major typhoon strength of 96 kt or more, including Typhoon Krosa, Typhoon Matmo and Typhoon Phanfone.

Landfalls and impacts

Typhoon Wutip's center stayed offshore, but flooding in the Federated States of Micronesia contaminated water supplies and damaged crops, leaving more than 11,000 people needing food assistance, and Guam lost power; no deaths were reported. In the summer, Typhoon Lekima came ashore at Wenling in Zhejiang late on 9 August (UTC) as a strong typhoon, then turned north across eastern China, where flooding and landslides destroyed farms and houses. The season article lists 105 deaths and about US$9.28 billion in damage for Lekima (nominal 2019 dollars), including 31 people who died when three boats sank in the Guimaras Strait in the Philippines, where Lekima strengthened the southwest monsoon.

Several other storms struck East Asia in August and September. Typhoon Krosa brought up to 869.5 mm of rain to Yanase in Kochi Prefecture; three people died in Japan and damage there reached ¥2.177 billion (US$20.5 million, 2019). Typhoon Lingling crossed Miyako-jima and passed west of South Korea, where gusts reached 196 km/h at Heuksando, three people died and damage totalled ₩28.76 billion (US$24.1 million, 2019), before making landfall in North Korea, where five people died. Typhoon Mitag struck Zhoushan in Zhejiang and then South Korea; in Taiwan the Nanfang'ao Bridge collapsed after its passage, killing six people, and the season article lists 22 deaths in all.

Typhoon Hagibis did the most damage of the year. It crossed the Izu Peninsula on 12 October as a much weaker but very large typhoon that was accelerating and beginning extratropical transition, and its rain caused major flooding across Japan. The season article lists 121 deaths and more than US$17 billion in damage (nominal 2019 dollars), which made Hagibis the costliest Pacific typhoon on record at the time. The storm forced the cancellation of Rugby World Cup matches and Saturday's sessions at the Japanese Grand Prix, and suspended rail and air services.

The Philippines bore the brunt of the late season. Typhoon Kammuri made landfall in the Bicol Region at its 120 kt peak on 2 December; the national disaster agency reported 17 deaths, 318 injuries and ₱6.65 billion (US$130 million, 2019) in damage. On Christmas Day, Typhoon Phanfone came ashore near Salcedo in Eastern Samar, only weeks after Kammuri, causing floods and mudslides that left 50 people dead and 55 missing, with damage of about ₱3.44 billion (US$67.2 million, 2019). Earlier, Matmo killed two people in Vietnam and destroyed about 2,700 houses.

Counts, names and agency practice

Agency totals for 2019 differ because each counts in its own way. JMA, which uses ten-minute average winds, named 29 storms and classed 17 as typhoons; its list begins with Tropical Storm Pabuk, which formed on the last day of 2018 south of Vietnam, and includes Sepat. JTWC, which uses one-minute winds, issued warnings on 30 tropical cyclones. The site's counts use the US one-minute record during the tropical stage, which is why two March and June systems that JMA never named count here as tropical storms, while Sepat, which JTWC treated as a subtropical storm, has no tropical-stage winds in the archive.

Sepat also changed how JTWC describes such systems. JTWC does not routinely warn on subtropical storms, but this one tracked past U.S. bases in Okinawa and along southern Japan during the G20 summit in Osaka while JMA issued tropical cyclone warnings on it. Afterward JTWC added a standard subtropical summary section and image annotations to its significant tropical weather advisories.

The season's destruction showed in the retirement lists. In February 2020 the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee retired five names, among them Lekima, Hagibis, Kammuri and Phanfone, and the Philippine agency PAGASA retired Tisoy and Ursula, its local names for Kammuri and Phanfone. The names Mun, Bailu and Bualoi were used for the first time in 2019, replacing names retired after the 2013 and 2014 seasons.