Fears of Typhoon Hinnamnor were high in South Korea. Memories of a devastating hurricane 19 years ago were awakened. However, the Korean peninsula got off lightly.
Rain, wind and bad weather: Typhoon Hinnamnor reigns in Korea.
The sun shone again over Seoul on Tuesday morning. previously had Typhoon Hinnamnor, the eleventh tropical cyclone to hit Korea this year, has brought heavy rain to the Korean capital since Sunday. In the district of Gangnam, located south of the Han River, the amount of precipitation by Tuesday morning was 272 millimeters, which corresponds to 272 liters per square meter.
TY #Hinnamnor ? made landfall in South Korea as Category 2 storm, causing flooding and power outages. It is now moving away and weakening. #SouthKorea #typhoon
The latest forecast and LIVE satellite imagery ➡️https://t.co/iaoODv2uWs pic.twitter.com/SpBVkZhdWp
— Windy.com (@Windycom) September 6, 2022
Up to 40 kilometers per hour
Korea subdivides hurricanes in four categories: medium, strong, very strong and super strong, in the latter case the maximum wind speed is at least 54 kilometers per hour. Typhoon Hinnamnor was classified as a very strong cyclone; the maximum wind speed had been up to 40 kilometers per hour. It is considered the fourth strongest hurricane to hit Korea since 1945.
In South Korea, memories of Typhoon Maemi, which killed at least 58 people 19 years ago, had been awakened in the past few days. However, the peninsula got off lighter this year than in September 2003: the damage caused by “Hinnamnor” was significantly less. So far is only the case of a 25-year-old known to have been swept away by a river in the southeastern city of Ulsan. He has been missing ever since. According to Korean media, he is said to have been intoxicated.
On the southern island of Jeju, around 11,000 households were temporarily without electricity. Thousands of people have been evacuated across the country; numerous schools had stopped teaching; Hundreds of flights and train connections have been suspended.
Typhoon Hinnamnor neared South Korea, forcing flight cancellations, suspensions of some business operations and closures of schools, as the country raised its typhoon alert to its highest level https://t.co/OdNNuYsvqn pic.twitter.com/PzkL4D6iQL
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 5, 2022
Across the East Sea towards Sapporo
The typhoon hit the holiday island of Jeju particularly hard before it weakened as it turned towards the peninsula. In parts of the island, the accumulated rainfall from Sunday through Tuesday morning was 948 liters per square meter. A comparison shows how heavy the rainfall was in Jeju within a few days: In Zurich, precipitation was 1127 liters per square meter for the whole of last year.
The typhoon brings a lot of rain to Korea.
The typhoon hit the Korean peninsula near the coastal city of Busan around 4:50 a.m. early Tuesday morning. It then turned towards Ulsan before leaving the mainland at around 7:10 a.m. and heading towards the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan. The hurricane is expected to hit Sapporo, capital of northern Japan’s Hokkaido Prefecture, around midnight.