2012 Pacific Typhoon Season

The 2012 Pacific typhoon season was a fairly average and destructive season, but rather active since 2004. The season became very active between mid-July and mid-August, for nine named storms formed during the period. Vicente underwent explosive intensification and made landfall over the west Pearl River Delta as a strong typhoon. Damrey developed into a typhoon in the Yellow Sea and became the most intense tropical cyclone to made landfall north of the Yangtze River since 1949. Typhoon Haikui, although far away from the Philippines, killed at least 89 people in the country. Typhoon Tembin affected Taiwan twice because of its cyclonic loop.

From late August to September, three very powerful typhoons, Bolaven, Sanba and Jelawat, directly hit Okinawa Island successively. In October, the remnants of Severe Tropical Storm Gaemi arrived at the Bay of Bengal and re-intensified into a deep depression before making landfall over Bangladesh. In December, Typhoon Bopha, an unusually very low-latitude but very powerful tropical cyclone, caused catastrophic damage in Mindanao, where was just severely afftected by Severe Tropical Storm Washi in 2011. Bopha killed at least 1,146 people and cost $1.04 billion (2012 USD) in the Philippines, becoming the deadliest storm worldwide in 2012 and the costliest Philippine typhoon in history.