The tropics have started to stir. While the stirring is not in the Atlantic, it is in the Western Pacific where tropical waters are already starting to warm. The Western Pacific region is the most active and prolific of all the tropical basins in the world. The Eastern Pacific and North Atlantic are the next most active. The most powerful storms also occur in the Western Pacific including the strongest ever recorded in the world with Typhoon Tip back in 1979. Winds in Tip reached as high as 190 miles per hour, or 306 kilometers per hour while the pressure dropped to 870 millibars, or 25.69 inches of Hg (Mercury). By comparison, the strongest storm ever measured on record in the Atlantic was Hurricane Wilma back in the stormy and turbulent 2005 season.

Last week, a moderate typhoon, Negouri, churned through the Northwestern Pacific, and swept through the South China Sea with a landfall in the island province of Hainan, and then into the mainland to the Southwest of Hong Kong. According to news reports from China Daily, there were three dead and 40 missing as of Monday afternoon although 18 Chinese fishermen were rescued near Haikou according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua. Winds reached minimum hurricane force on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as they were sustained at 120 kilometers per hour, or 75 mph, which made Negouri a Category One Hurricane. As the storm moved inland, it weakened, and lost its hurricane status. Becoming a tropical storm, and eventually a tropical depression, Negouri then moved through the Chinese commercial jewel of Hong Kong with torrential rains. In Hong Kong, the storm left a trail of costly damage including $30 million in revenue for the Hong Kong Jockey club, and thousands of dollars to local merchants in the city.

According to the Associated Press article on the typhoon, approximately 120,000 people were forced to flee to higher ground in the face of the storm. Typhoon Negouri, the first storm to affect China in 2008, was one of the earliest typhoons to strike China. The last time such a storm hit the mainland was before the Communist takeover in 1949. According to news reports from the former Portuguese colony of Macau, which was turned over to China in the late 1990s, forecasters there were blaming La Nina conditions in the Eastern Pacific for the early arrival of typhoon season. La Nina occurs when sea surface temperatures off the coast of South America are below normal, which is the opposite of El Nino conditions. Several weeks ago, Hurricaneville reported that seasonal forecasters noted the La Nina conditions were easing.