I know much of the United States is following the progress of Hurricane Isaac, wondering if it will wreak the same havoc as Hurricane Katrina did a few years ago. While I certainly hope that the strength of the storm diminished considerably, I've had other things on my mind. Namely, Typhoon Bolaven.
It's Typhoon Season here in Northeastern Asia. I've experienced several typhoons in my time in Korea. Generally, they've just been a little bit windier and a little bit wetter than a normal monsoon season day. Given the general geography of the peninsula, we tend to be pretty sheltered in Seoul. But this one was different. It was supposed to be The Big One. The storm itself was absolutely massive -- it was around 2000 kilometers (1,250 miles), so the predictions were that the wind and rain would last a long time. It was also supposed to be pretty powerful.
Bolaven (which is a plateau in southern Laos, in case you were wondering) gave the Japanese island of Okinawa a pretty rough time of it. Apparently it was the worst typhoon to hit in the last 50 years or so. Everyone in Korea was bracing for a rough storm. The government cancelled school (although strangely, many of the teachers were still expected to brave the storm to go sit at their desks in an empty school). The military bases went black. It was pretty crazy. The storm was supposed to hit sometime on Tuesday, but we weren't sure exactly when.
I stayed up until the wee hours following radars, reading about typhoons and generally waiting for something to happen. Sometime around 4am, I gave up. According to the radar, we were supposed to be getting something. But when I looked out my window, I didn't see much. There were some gusts of wind, but not anything too crazy. So, I made sure that all of my windows were securely fastened, my flashlight was handy, and I went to bed.
I woke up the next morning around 10, fully prepared to see that I had no electricity and a scene outside of my window that could be used for hurricane stock footage. But things were in pretty much the same condition they had been in the night before. I went about my day, continuing to follow the radar and keep an eye on what was happening outside. Only it didn't ever seem like anything happened.
I read my Bible, drank tea, chatted with friends, worked on stuff for the upcoming semester, made a new iTunes playlist... And still, nothing happened. The storm moved on the radar, but that was really the only thing that changed. From what I've read, things were much worse elsewhere in South Korea. Last I heard, there were 9 people who had been killed. There were some Chinese fishermen who ran into trouble. I think that somewhere around 10 of them are still missing. But it certainly wasn't the horrible, terrible storm that everyone was expecting. No word yet on how North Korea fared, but they've been having a lot of flooding problems to start with, so it probably isn't a good situation.
In Central Seoul, things were pretty quiet. The wind got quite strong toward the end of the day. I saw some trees do some pretty spectacular acrobatics. But I never lost power, there's no damage to my apartment, and it seems like life will move on as normal today.
For me, the worst part was that I'm from the Midwest. I'm used to tornado weather. With tornado weather, if there's a lot of wind and storm weather and it suddenly gets really quiet and calm, this is generally bad news. I've watched a lot of thunderstorms and tornado cells in Indiana. This is as ingrained in me as my childhood phone number and address. But with typhoons, these wind gusts and moments of calm are quiet common. So all day long, I kept having to remind myself of this meteorological fact and resist the urge to go to my non-existent bathtub and hide. But I'm thankful that mental wear and tear is the worst thing I came away with from this typhoon. Apparently there is another one that is gearing up to hit us on Thursday night (Typhoon Tembin) but I suspect that it will be a tropical storm or less when it gets here.
This morning, I found myself unable to sleep. So I went up to my rooftop about 15 minutes before the official sunrise time and took a few pictures of the city waking itself up in a post-Bolaven world.
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