Northwestern Pacific Ocean
The Northwest Pacific Ocean is the most active basin on the planet. Annually, an average of 25.7 tropical cyclones in the basin acquire tropical storm strength or greater; also, an average of 16 typhoons occurred each year during the 1968–1989 period. The basin occupies all the territory north of the equator and west of the International Date Line, including the South China Sea. The basin sees activity year-round; however, tropical activity is at its minimum in February and March.
Tropical storms in this region often affect China, Hong Kong, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, plus numerous Oceanian islands such as Guam, the Northern Marianas and Palau. Sometimes, tropical storms in this region affect Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand and even Singapore. This is by far the most active basin, accounting for one-third of all tropical cyclone activity. The coast of China sees the most landfalling tropical cyclones worldwide. The Philippines archipelago receives an average of 6-7 tropical cyclone landfalls per year.
Read more about this topic: Tropical Cyclone Basins
Famous quotes containing the words pacific and/or ocean:
“Really, there is no infidelity, nowadays, so great as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)