All Eyes on Philippines for Typhoon Hagupit / Ruby

UPDATE 12/5: Hagupit has been re-declared a Super Typhoon and churns on towards the island nation; for updates view this news story. More satellite images of the storm at its peak strength yesterday are available from CIMSS and OPC. Heavy rain (shown below) will likely cause massive flooding and landslides.

ORIGINAL POST: Super Typhoon Hagupit approaching the Philippines today is threatening to make landfall near the same area that Super Typhoon Haiyan (Blog 1 | Blog 2) did in November 2013. Our primary impact map is shown below; for updates view this news story.

Haiyan taught us that there can still be unpleasant surprises in a country that is hit, on average, with a dozen tropical cyclones per year. Haiyan killed at least 6,300 people and did a surprising amount of damage for a country that should be fortified to deal with major storms. Fortunately, this storm should hit in a slightly weaker state, in a slightly different place (though major destruction is still possible) and it sounds like people are already fleeing the coast as best they can.

Early Thursday morning (ET), Twitter was alight with discussion on the storm; almost every word trending in Manila and the entire country was about the typhoon preparation and forecast (according to TrendsMap.com -- see below).