A quiet storm

Quiet in the sense that we have heard very little about it. Ernesto has generated more hot air in the media than it has on land or sea. With all the hand-wringing and worrying and miles and miles of ink in the press, it is strange that we do not hear about another storm raging now. Meet Super Typhoon Ioke -- from the Voice of America:

'Monster' Typhoon Ioke Makes Direct Hit on Wake Island
Super Typhoon Ioke has made a direct hit on Wake Island, pounding the tiny U.S. Pacific territory with catastrophic winds of up to 300 kilometers an hour.

Ioke is the strongest central Pacific typhoon in at least 12 years. Forecasters expect the "monster" storm to submerge Wake Island and destroy everything on it that is not made of concrete.

Wake is home to a U.S. Air Force base and a scientific outpost, roughly midway between Hawaii and Japan.

The eye of the typhoon skirted the north edge of the coral atoll Thursday. The U.S. Air Force had already evacuated all of the island's 188 residents to Hawaii, 3,700 kilometers across the Pacific.

The residents - Air Force personnel and American and Thai contractors - left Monday aboard two U.S. C-17 Globemaster planes. It was the first time the territory was evacuated in nearly 30 years.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Super typhoon knocks out weather sensors
Typhoon Ioke knocked out Wake Island's weather sensors on Thursday as it lashed the isle with some of the central Pacific's fiercest winds in over a decade, the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters monitoring the 2.5-square-mile atoll's wind and temperature gauges from Hawaii said the instruments blew out as the storm approached with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and gusts of up to 190 mph.

Here is the 'ofishul' portrait from the US Navy: Each line on the satellite image represents two degrees of Latitude or Longitude. At the equator, two degrees equals just under 140 miles. This puppy is over 500 miles in diameter!