Super Typhoon Nida Strongest Storm Ever?

NOTE: You can get updates on Nida's (slow) movement from AccuWeather.com (wide satellite image & text forecast) or the Navy (close-up satellite image and track) as linked below.

The CIMSS tropical website, which estimates hurricane intensity by satellite using the Advanced Dvorak Technique, said that Super Typhoon Nida had a pressure reading of 869.3 mb (25.67" Hg) on Wednesday. You may recall, I talked last month about Super Typhoon Tip which holds the record for the strongest tropical cyclone worldwide; Tip bottomed out at 870 mb in 1979. The official wind numbers put Nida at 160-knot (mph) sustained winds; SSEC estimated 164 knots (189 mph). Officially, Tip had 165-knot winds according to the Hurricane FAQ.

| SEE MORE IMAGERY ON THE CIMSS BLOG

WikiPedia notes that, while recon flights no longer take place in the Pacific (insinuating that the record cannot be officially broken now):

"Three researchers determined two typhoons, Angela in 1995 and Gay in 1992, maintained higher Dvorak numbers than Tip, and believed that one or both of the two may have been more intense than Tip. Also, Cyclone Monica of 2006 was rated at 869 mb by Dvorak classifications."

So in short, the record cannot be technically broken by Nida, and there was at least one storm (Monica in 2006) which had a pressure reading less than Nida, but she has proven to be one heck of a storm! Fortunately she is projected to curve out into the Pacific without reaching Japan.

I have an email in to my buddy Scott over at CIMSS to see if they have records of other storms with similarly low Dvorak numbers, I'll post an update here if they do.