Typhoon Rai: rescue efforts continue after strongest storm to hit Philippines this year

• Recently, Rai has hit the Philippines late in the typhoon season – most cyclones typically develop between July and October

Typohoon Rai:

• Super Typhoon Rai is battering the southern Philippines, forcing thousands of people to take shelter amid warnings of widespread flooding and destruction.
• Typhoon Rai, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Odette, is currently a powerful tropical cyclone over the South China Sea which recently passed through the Philippines.
• Rai became the third Category 5 super typhoon to form in South China Sea after Pamela of 1954 and Rammasun of 2014.

About Typhoon

• Typhoon and hurricane are two of the regionally specific names for strong tropical cyclones
• Tropical cyclones are rotating, organized systems of clouds and thunderstorms that originate over tropical or subtropical waters and have closed, low-level circulation.
• What a tropical cyclone gets called is determined by the ocean it forms over and how severe it becomes.
• In the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific, tropical cyclones are called hurricanes.
• In the Northwest Pacific, they are known as typhoons.