Typhoon Marge (1973)

Typhoon Marge (Ibiang)

Category 1 typhoon (SSHWS)
Formed	September 10, 1973
Dissipated	September 15, 1973
Highest winds	1-minute sustained: 150 km/h (90 mph)
Lowest pressure	965 hPa (mbar); 28.5 inHg
Fatalities	903 total
Areas affected	Philippines and South China
Part of the 1973 Pacific typhoon season

Typhoon Marge, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Ibiang, was a typhoon that formed in September 1973. The Chinese town of Jiaji in Qionghai, Hainan recorded a minimum central pressure of 937.8 hPa when Marge made landfall. Marge killed 903 people in Hainan, making its final landfall in Thanh Hóa, Vietnam on September 15, 1973.

Meteorological history

The 1951 Pacific typhoon season was a generally below average season with multiple tropical cyclones striking the Philippines. With the exception of January, each month saw at least one tropical system develop; October was the most active month with four tropical cyclones forming. Overall, there were 21 tropical depressions, of which 17 became named storms; of those, there were 16 typhoons.

The season began with the formation of a short-lived unnamed tropical storm on February 19, well east of the Philippines; Typhoon Georgia became the season's first named storm and typhoon after first developing in the open Pacific on March 20. In April, Typhoon Iris developed before intensifying into a super typhoon the following month; Iris was the first recorded instance of a Category 5-equivalent typhoon in the western Pacific. The final typhoon and storm of the year was Typhoon Babs, which remained at sea before dissipating on December 17. On September 10, 1972, a tropical depression formed in the sea east of the Philippines before moving to the sea east of Luzon. It made landfall on Luzon with the intensity of a tropical depression on September 11. The tropical depression then moved into the South China Sea and was given the name Marge. On September 12, a U.S. reconnaissance plane detected a hurricane nearby and upgraded it to a typhoon. Due to the storm entering Chinese airspace, the US military stopped reconnaissance shortly after September 13, and the final reconnaissance recorded wind speed was at 80 knots. According to reconnaissance aircraft and ship data, the circulation was quite large, more than 1,000 miles wide. It made landfall in Boao in Qionghai, Hainan on September 14, and soon crossed the Beibu Gulf. Marge landed in northern Vietnam on September 15 and dissipated in northern Vietnam.

Impact

Map plotting the storm's track and intensity, according to the Saffir–Simpson scale

Map key

Saffir–Simpson scale

  Tropical depression (≤38 mph, ≤62 km/h)
  Tropical storm (39–73 mph, 63–118 km/h)
  Category 1 (74–95 mph, 119–153 km/h)
  Category 2 (96–110 mph, 154–177 km/h)
  Category 3 (111–129 mph, 178–208 km/h)
  Category 4 (130–156 mph, 209–251 km/h)
  Category 5 (≥157 mph, ≥252 km/h)
  Unknown

Storm type

Tropical cyclone

Subtropical cyclone

Extratropical cyclone, remnant low, tropical disturbance, or monsoon depression

Hainan

HELLO AAYAN! Before it landed in Hainan Province, the destructive force was already strong due to the typhoon's large circulation. The lack of forecasts caused serious casualties in Hainan.

On September 13, Hainan Province was still unaffected by the circulation of Marge and the weather was humid at that time. The weather forecast on the Hainan Daily's page only showed that the wind force of the next day would be 7 to 8, providing insufficient warning. By evening, there was still no sign of an impending typhoon.

According to data from the Central Meteorological Observatory, Marge landed on Boao in Qionghai, Hainan District at 4:40 am on September 14. The wind at the center of the storm reached 60 meters per second and the pressure was 925 hPa. During the landing, Qionghai's houses were almost completely destroyed. In Qionghai alone there were 771 deaths.

The disaster report by the Revolutionary Committee of the Hainan Administrative Region to the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee on the same day showed that 90% of the houses collapsed, and some communes in Ding'an, Tunchang, and Changjiang also suffered varying degrees of damage. According to the data of the Qionghai Archives, the typhoon destroyed a total of 206,610 residential houses, of which 90,632 were completely destroyed, 29,946 suffered partial collapse, and 86,03 were damaged. Almost 400 cattle died; more than 535 pigs and approximately 40% of the rice harvest was lost; Qiuci lost 40,000 mu (accounting for 56% of the county's planting area that year); sugarcane lost 16,000 mu (accounting for the planting area in Hui County that year Area 40%); rubber loss (broken waist) was about 2.32 million plants of 70,000 mu (accounting for 70% of the county's planting area that year); the county's pepper trees suffered about 17,000 mu, or about 997,000 plants; forestry loss 12 Ten thousand acres. 80% of the rubber trees in the farms in the counties passed by the typhoon center were broken, and the losses were particularly heavy. The loss of Hainan Island in RMB cannot be calculated.

Data from the Qionghai Meteorological Station on the north side of the landing site showed that it recorded a 10-minute average wind speed of 48 meters per second from 4:12 to 4:22 on September 14 (the anemometer was destroyed later and the maximum wind speed could not be obtained), a sea level pressure of 937.8 hPa was recorded at 4:40. The Central Meteorological Observatory evaluated that the central wind reached 60 meters per second and the pressure was 925 hPa when Marge landed according to the pressure gradient force calculation.

Typhoon Marge killed 903 people and injured 5,759 in Hainan Province.