Thread: hotels suggestions in singapore in late oct

Sorry I can't be much of help here. I was there 22 years ago and stayed at the DAICHI HOTEL. But I find this story here to be very interesting. Lying only 1.0 degrees north of the equator, check out what happened in 2006.

It's a lesson in Meteorology 101: Hurricanes can't form near the equator. However, a storm called Typhoon


Vamei violated that edict in December 2001, arising just 150 kilometers north of the equator in the South


China Sea, near Singapore. A new analysis of the strange atmospheric behavior that spawned the typhoon


shows that such a storm may occur just once every few centuries.


Hurricanes, called typhoons and cyclones in


other parts of the world, are born when intense


thunderstorms churn the atmosphere over an


expanse of warm ocean water. Earth's rotation


makes these disturbances spin by means of the


Coriolis effect, an apparent deflection of moving


parcels of air that forces storms to whirl


counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere


and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. This


"force" is zero at the equator, so any infant


storms there don't get the necessary kick to


start spinning. Indeed, no recorded hurricane


had formed within about 400 kilometers of the


equator.


For that reason, researchers were startled when


newborn Typhoon Vamei swept just north of


Singapore, at 1.3°N latitude, on 27 December


2001. With sustained winds of 140 kilometers


per hour, the cyclone flooded the southern


Malay peninsula and damaged two U.S. naval


ships. The confluence of events that triggered


the typhoon made it close to a perfect storm,


say meteorologist C. P. Chang of the Naval


Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and


his colleagues in the 1 February


. A vortex of thunderstorms


from Borneo drifted over the warm South China Sea and persisted for days. At the same time, an intense


surge of cool monsoon winds from the northeast whistled through the gap between Borneo and Indochina,


wrapping around the stormy vortex and making it spin with no help from Earth's rotation. The winds and


storms lasted just long enough--and the South China Sea was just wide enough--to boost Vamei to typhoon


strength. Chang calculates that the unusual conditions might not repeat for 100 to 400 years.


Geophysical


Research Letters


"This was quite an interesting and rare event, both in time and in place," agrees meteorologist Richard


Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Both Chang


and Anthes note that cold surges of winds from high latitudes penetrate close to the equator only in the


South China Sea, making an equatorial hurricane an unlikely surprise anywhere else on the globe.


--ROBERT IRION


Typhoon Vamei (center)


formed so close to the equator in 2001 that its


winds swirled in both hemispheres.


Perfect storm.


CREDIT: MODIS/NASA GSFC


ScienceNOW -- Irion 2003 (408): 4 4/8/03 4:04 PM

http://

that's interesting.. well thanks anyway...

yes i mean orchard road... thanks for the suggestion....