I didn't realize that. Good to know, thanks. I did look up the other paths, but it didn't jump out to me that a typhoon in this area would almost always trend North while in progress. Three typhoons isn't a large enough sample size. I didn't know anything about typhoons before Sendong despite the fact that I had already lived here 3 years at that time. The worst flooding I saw here was shortly after first arriving in 2008 and that was nothing close to Sendong. The landlord of the place I was living at the time (Dumaguete Studio Apartments) said that was the worst flooding he had seen in his 10 years here. I assume the reason he had not seen worse flooding was partly because of something else you brought up, which is that people had previously thought Dumaguete to be safe from typhoons. I assume Dumaguete just hasn't seen many typhoons. I certainly do spend too much on the internet. The fact that I'm a WEB programmer doesn't help. Looking at news sites is a perfect way to procrastinate from doing work. When a typhoon is blowing through, I can even justify it to myself by insisting that I'm monitoring a dangerous storm for my own safety.
It was "clear" if only you wished to believe the forecast. Typhoons often change paths, especially those that are often days away. You obviously have not been watching very many of them that go through the Philippines. It has nothing to do with being a "drama queen", but does have everything to do with being logical and learning from weather history.
Remember this funky path from Pablo? View attachment 9720 That's just the first image that I saw in a search. I don't remember what the final path ended up looking like. But it looked like it heard something it didn't like and was going to come back to give us round 2. ETA: Reminded me of my mom when she used to say "Don't make me turn this car around!"
Okay, I surrender, you are right of course, a bad cold and three sleepless nights seem to have eroded my brain enough to make mayor mistakes like the one regarding the rotation, I could have simply check the image of the storm but preferred to post in a hurry...
Next time, just check the rotation of the swirlie in d' crapper. Above the Equator, they both spin the same way.
It looks as though Tacloban, Leyte took the brunt of it and got hammered. It could have been Dumaguete or elsewhere, but it wasn't by the grace of God. Super storm 'Yolanda' (Haiyan) hits the Philippines
Here in Norway the news now rapporting now more than 12 k dead in th PH. And months before we know for sure the exact numbers.
