Typhoon Megi eyes China coast, Hong Kong

* Rain tomorrow AM: Full Forecast | Climate poll cause for despair? *

While no longer the freakish category 5 super typhoon that hammered the northern Philippines, Megi remains a formidable and expansive category 3 typhoon in the South China Sea. (The super typhoon designation is reserved for storms with sustained winds of 150 mph or higher, equivalent to a category 4 or 5 hurricane).

Packing winds of 115 mph, the U.S Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) tracks Megi on a course to make its second landfall very close to Hong Kong Friday into Saturday. However, there is significant uncertainty in the track - as shown by the large track cone (bounded by the yellow lines) in the image above - due to poor agreement among forecast models.

According to JTWC, conditions are favorable for Megi to strengthen over the next one to two days perhaps back to super typhoon intensity (category 4). After that, it is forecast to gradually weaken due to wind shear (changing of wind with height) that will interfere with the storm's circulation. Nonetheless, Megi is likely to be a devastating storm for coastal China. As meteorologist Jeff Masters at Wunderground wrote this morning:

... Megi will probably hit China as a major Category 3 typhoon,bringing a significant storm surge, high winds, and widespread torrential rains that will likely make this a multi-billion dollar disaster for China.

The toll inflicted on the northern Philippines by Megi is still being discovered but initial reports indicate at least 10 people were killed and that there was flooding and extensive wind damage.

Outdoing the images I posted last night, the University of Wisconsin's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies posted the following incredible satellite shots of Megi as it hit the Philippines on its blog. They were too dramatic not to republish below: