Typhoon Warning

[9 p.m., Sunday] Tropical Storm Kong-Rey is not yet a typhoon but the weather gurus are convinced enough that it will soon be so that they've issued a typhoon warning for Guam and the Marianas.

If the storm stays on the current trajectory (storms seem to have a mind of their own) the eye will pass just north of Guam but we'll get plenty of wind and rain. Thus we are now at civilian COR 3 ("condition of readiness 3" -- the military uses similar terminology but with different benchmarks).

Typhoons are the same as hurricanes. When they form in the Atlantic and the Eastern Pacific they are called hurricanes. When they form in the Western Pacific they are called typhoons.

Currently it is fairly calm on Guam -- a little cloudy but just the normal ocean breezes. The only indicators that the storm is approaching is that a few people have started putting up storm shutters and there was a run on D-size batteries at K-Mart -- but no lines this afternoon. I heard that there was a line at the gas station on Andersen Air Force Base. No one seems terribly concerned. Typhoons are pretty routine for those who have lived in the Marianas for any length of time. Two or three a year seem to hit Guam every year.

UPDATE: 11:30 p.m. Sunday. Guam Civil Defense just sent a text message to my cell phone saying that we're now at COR 2. Kudos to the CD people for getting the text message system operational.