Typhoon Songda (2016)

Typhoon Songda
Ides of October storm

Typhoon (JMA scale)
Category 4 (Saffir–Simpson scale)
Typhoon Songda shortly after peak intensity on October 12
Formed	October 3, 2016
Dissipated	October 16, 2016
(Extratropical after October 13)
Highest winds	10-minute sustained: 185 km/h (115 mph) 1-minute sustained: 240 km/h (150 mph)
Lowest pressure	925 hPa (mbar); 27.32 inHg
Fatalities	None
Damage	Unknown
Areas affected	Pacific Northwest
Part of the 2016 Pacific typhoon season

Typhoon Songda was the sixth most intense tropical cyclone of the Northwest Pacific Ocean in 2016. Also known as the Ides of October storm, it struck the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada as a powerful extratropical cyclone. Songda was the twentieth named storm and the ninth typhoon of the annual typhoon season. The system developed into a tropical storm south of Minamitorishima on October 8 and strengthened into a typhoon on October 10. Songda reached its peak intensity southeast of Japan late on October 11 at an unusually high latitude, before it became extratropical on October 13.

On October 2, the United States Central Pacific Hurricane Center started to monitor a weak trough of low pressure that had developed about 1,000 mi (1,610 km) to the southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. Over the next day as the system moved towards the northwest, showers and thunderstorms gradually developed along the trough, but were showing little to no signs of organisation. The system was subsequently classified as a tropical depression by the Japan Meteorological Agency during October 3, as it crossed the International Dateline and moved into the western Pacific Ocean.

Often presenting an exposed low-level circulation center (LLCC), the tropical depression drifted westward without further development for days owing to a marginal environment within the subsident region of a tropical upper tropospheric trough (TUTT) cell to the northwest, with moderate vertical wind shear. Late on October 7, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) eventually issued a Tropical Cyclone Formation Alert for the system, when the TUTT cell was beginning to move to the west-southwest, allowing convection to develop over the consolidating LLCC.