Extreme Category 5 Typhoon Yutu makes a devastating landfall in Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory

Super Typhoon Yutu, tied for the strongest storm anywhere in the world in 2018, slammed into the U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands on Thursday local time, with weather agencies predicting extreme destruction.

The storm, with 180-mile-per-hour sustained winds, was set to create “devastating damage” in the Pacific islands east of the Philippines, said the National Weather Service in Guam. Much of the island of Saipan and all of the island of Tinian were entirely enveloped within the eye of the massive cyclone, as residents hunkered down in the early hours of the morning.

“Most homes will sustain severe damage with potential for complete roof failure and wall collapse,” the service continued. “Most industrial buildings will be destroyed.”

The governor’s office of the Mariana islands called on residents to “shelter-in-place.” Local news media in Saipan, the Marianas capitol, reported that emergency shelters had been quickly filled and more shelters were opened to accommodate additional refuge seekers.

“Stay safe, Marianas,” Del. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (D), the islands’ representative in Congress, wrote on Twitter.

The Northern Marianas, which came under U.S. control following World War II battles in the Pacific, are home to 52,000 people, the majority of whom are U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals. Tinian, the island at the center of the storm, was the site from which the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki originally launched.

The islands are now yet another U.S. territory to have been pummeled by a strong hurricane in the past two years. The U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico suffered calamitous strikes in the 2017 hurricane season, and Guam was recently struck by Typhoon Mangkhut.

The extreme strike occurred with little warning, as the storm strengthened from Category 1 to Category 5 intensity in just a day’s time shortly before landfall. The maximum sustained wind speed increased by 80 mile per hours over that time, creating a storm with gusts exceeding 200 miles per hour.

Scientists have recently suggested that such dangerous “rapid intensification” events, which also happened in the cases of hurricanes Michael and Florence, may become more common as the planet warms and the oceans heat up, providing additional fuel for storms.

Yutu, which stands for the “Jade Hare,” according to the Hong Kong Observatory, is tied for the strongest on Earth this year with Typhoon Mangkhut, which also reached winds of 180 miles per hour, at the higher end of Category 5 strength. In general, the Northwest Pacific, where tropical cyclones are referred to as typhoons (not hurricanes), sees the most numerous and strongest storms on Earth.

President Trump declared a disaster in the Marianas, and the Guam Daily Post reported that additional Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel, which had been on nearby Guam due to Mangkhut, would be deployed to the Marianas. FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment but tweeted that the agency is “monitoring Typhoon Yutu and coordinating with local authorities.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that it had ” generators pre-staged for Yutu at nearby locations – 77 generators in Guam, 1 generator at a Rota Hospital, and 85 additional generators in Hawaii.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose department has responsibility for U.S. territories, recently visited the Marianas as part of a broader trip to the Pacific. During the trip, according to the Guam-based Pacific Daily News, Zinke said of climate change: “If it is a priority in the Pacific, then it becomes our priority too.”

Jason Samenow contributed to this report.