We've been following the progress of super typhoon Haiyan -- strongest typhoon to make landfall in recorded history -- the past couple days as it approached and ripped across the Philippines. Not a matter of idle curiosity, as Haiyan's path starts as a low pressure system SSE of Ponhpei, Micronesia (FSM), essentially back-tracking the route of MV Shearwater from our Pacific crossing this past spring / early summer. Palau and the south/central Philippines have been very hard-hit; areas which appeared idyllically tropical as we passed through, now devastated with (in the case of PI, great loss of life).

The image above is the early predicted path, which shows the system's origin, not the actual final path. The image below shows several days later the path through PI.

Haiyan roared right through the area (Samar, Leyte, Surigao) of Shearwater's departure from the Philippines (early May); the same area MV DavidEllis and MV Kwakatu tracked through (late Feb - early March) 2008; then just north of the city (Dumaguete) where my cousin Steve's family lives; and as it left PI to the west, the typhoon went over the top of Busuanga and Coron town where I was with MV Mandarin in April 2005. So, not just idle curiosity at all.

Down below, I've also posted the track of June 2008 Typhoon Fengshen (or T. Frank). I experienced this one directly as it passed over Bolinao (northern Luzon) where MV Ice had taken shelter. More than 1000 lives were lost in the PI as a result of Fengshen.

Thinking about the folks in that part of the world whose lives are already difficult, made more so by typhoon Haiyan.