About

This site explains tropical storms in plain language: what the forecasts actually mean, what gets cancelled and why, and which parts of a storm are genuinely dangerous.

Most storm coverage is written either for meteorologists or for headlines. Neither is much use when you are the one holding a plane ticket, or living somewhere a warning has just been issued for. The aim here is the middle ground — enough of the mechanism that the forecast stops being noise, and enough of the practical detail that you know what to do on the day.

Who writes this

My name is Kenny Kim. I am Korean, and my day job is working as a tour guide for overseas travel, which means I cross borders constantly and have spent a great deal of time in the Western Pacific during typhoon season.

I lived in the Philippines for seven years. That is where most of my direct experience of tropical cyclones comes from: sitting through them, waiting out the announcements, and dealing with the disruption for days afterwards. I have also been through storms in Korea, on Jeju Island, and in Phu Quoc. I have lived in Laos, based in Vientiane, and in Thailand, and I have spent time in Vietnam and China. I currently live in Vietnam.

That background is the reason this site exists, and it is also the limit of what I can claim. Seven years in one archipelago is a sample, not a qualification. I am not a meteorologist and I do not issue forecasts. What I can do is read an official bulletin, explain what it means for an ordinary person, and tell you when the practical answer differs from the dramatic one.

Where the information comes from

Every article that discusses a live or historical storm is built on the published output of the national meteorological agency responsible for that area, and it names and links that agency. In practice that usually means the Japan Meteorological Agency, the US National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center, PAGASA in the Philippines, the Korea Meteorological Administration, the Hong Kong Observatory, or the Central Weather Administration in Taiwan.

Satellite imagery is taken from NASA Worldview and is in the public domain. Climate figures are attributed to the source they came from, and where published figures disagree between sources, the article says so rather than picking the tidier number.

Those agencies are always the authority. This site is not a forecast service, and nothing here should be used in place of an official warning.

How these articles are written

I use AI tools as part of the drafting and research process, and I would rather say so plainly than let you wonder.

What that does not change: the figures in every article are taken from the named agency or dataset and checked against it, the first-person sections are my own experience and are not generated, and nothing is published that I have not read through myself. Where an article turns out to be wrong, I correct it rather than quietly deleting it.

What this site tries not to do

It does not chase alarm. A great many storms end up being far less dramatic than the first map suggests, and saying so is as much a part of the job as flagging the ones that matter. Where a storm is still developing, articles say what is known and what is not, and are updated as the picture changes.

It also tries not to pad. If the useful answer to a question is three paragraphs long, the article is three paragraphs long.

Contact

Corrections, questions, or something I got wrong: pogibkk@gmail.com. I read every message. A reply normally takes two to four days, and longer when I am travelling.

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