Philippine weather agency refutes false 'super typhoon' warning
- Published on July 23, 2024 at 07:49
- 4 min read
- By Jan Cuyco, AFP Philippines
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"We ask the public to take precautions against the approaching typhoon that is as strong as Typhoon Yolanda," read a Tagalog-language Facebook post, which used the Philippines' name for Super Typhoon Haiyan, published on July 18, 2024.
About 6,300 people were killed when Haiyan's fierce winds tore apart houses, toppled trees and whipped up tsunami-like waves that obliterated mostly poor coastal communities on November 8, 2013. A decade later, more than a thousand are still missing.
The post, shared by a page with more than 3,500 followers, continued: "The typhoon, which is called Super Typhoon Lakas, hit the eastern part of the Philippines at midnight and continues to bring heavy rains with a wind speed of 250 kilometres per hour."
Attached to the post is a picture that appears to show a satellite image of a typhoon covering nearly the entire country. In the upper-right corner is the logo of the state weather forecaster.
Similar claims were shared over 2,000 times alongside the purported satellite image elsewhere on Facebook such as here, here and here.
A variation of the claim included a link to "affected areas" that instead sent users to the landing page of e-commerce platform Shopee.
Comments on the posts suggested that some users appeared to believe the warning.
"I hope the storm will just hit the sea, so no one will be injured and no property will be damaged. Pray for us," one user wrote.
Another commented: "Lord, keep the storm away from us."
The Philippines is hit by an average of 20 major storms a year and scientists have warned that typhoons are becoming stronger due to human-induced climate change.
While the country was affected by monsoon rains and a low pressure area on July 18, the state weather agency did not issue any super typhoon warnings in either of its two weather forecasts on that day (archived links here and here).
No super typhoon
The state weather forecaster said posts warning of a strong typhoon similar to Haiyan hitting the country were "fake" during its weather forecast in the afternoon of July 18 (archived link).
"There is no truth to this claim," forecaster Chenel Dominguez said at the video's 2:15 mark.
The agency also refuted the claim on their official Facebook page (archived link).
The name "Lakas" -- the Tagalog word for strength -- was not listed among PAGASA's official list of typhoon names for 2024 (archived link).
The US Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) -- which monitors storms across the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans -- did not detect a super typhoon over the archipelago on July 18, according to an archived version of the site saved on the Wayback Machine on that day.
AFP also did not find any super typhoon warnings for the Philippines on the Hong Kong Observatory's English and Chinese X accounts on the same day.
Old satellite image
A reverse image search on Google of the purported satellite image used in the false post found a similar image published by the United Nations' Office for Disaster Risk Reduction on November 7, 2013 (archived link).
The UN image is captioned: "Super Typhoon Haiyan is bearing down on the Philippines and is due to make landfall Friday."
AFP showed the falsely shared image to Marco Ibañez, a specialist from the state weather agency, who said it corresponded to satellite imagery of Super Typhoon Haiyan taken on November 7, 2013.
"The base map of this image was taken from the Blue Marble imagery courtesy of NASA, while the storm structure is from the Himawari microwave band," he told AFP on July 19, adding the state weather forecaster had not published it.
The satellite image of Haiyan approaching the Philippines can be found on the website of the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared image (left) and the NOAA's satellite image of Haiyan (right):
AFP has previously debunked false warnings of super typhoons approaching the Philippines here and here.
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