Weather Break

Click here to listen to episode 459 of Weather Break.

It’s a pretty bad day when you get hit by a hurricane. The high winds, the heavy rains and the destructive storm surge–it’s not really something that anyone would CHOOSE to go through. Well, on June 15, 1991, a pretty big hurricane hit the Philippine island of Luzon. That was Typhoon Yunya. Yunya’s winds were about 120 miles per hour, making it a Category 3 storm. But as it would happen, the folks who were slammed by Typhoon Yunya would probably agree that the storm was hardly the worst thing that happened to them on that day. For as bad as the wind and the rain was during the hurricane, the reason why the folks on Luzon will always remember June 15, 1991 is that’s the day that Mt. Pinatubo erupted. That’s right– on the same day that a major hurricane struck their island, the people of Luzon also had to deal with the second biggest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. Were these events related? Tune it to find out!

Links:

Here is a nice meteorological overview of the two events.  There is also a discussion of ways in which Yunya influenced the spread of ash on this page.