On the edge of Typhoon Ketsana

It's all sunny again today, still rather windy, but over the last few days the monsoon didst blow. It's amazing how few really rough days you get in the low season, when you add it up. So many sunny days, many "decent" days and not much in the way of holiday-spoiling weather... But we had it this week! September ended with lots of wind and plenty of rain too, although a lot of that was at night.

I am going to stick my neck out and say this is the final big blow of the SW monsoon. Winds are steady now from the west or southwest, waves from the west, looks set to be a bit bouncy at sea for another week at least. Hopefully all blown out by the time the vegetarian festival starts on the 17th. Oh and for my little holiday which will start around the 9th, heading north via Chumphon to Kanchanaburi.

The normal SW monsoon was exaggerated this week as we certainly caught a distant corner of Typhoon Ketsana, which had already caused plenty of misery in the Philippines on the 25th - 26th September - some photos here (some rather graphic). The storm was a big one and dashed across the South China Sea to hit Vietnam on the 28th. From the 27th to the 29th, even though the storm hit land in Vietnam over 1,000km from Phuket, we surely got some extra rain and wind. It was a big storm system.

This excellent website has satellite pics and animations. If you look now you can see an animation from the last 7 days that clearly shows Ketsana build up and head west before dissipating over Vietnam/Cambodia:

http://agora.ex.nii.ac.jp/digital-typhoon/region/SEasia/1/

I have saved the current 7 day animation, may try to upload as a video later.

The weather had improved by last night, the sky was clear and although it was a bit grey this morning, today has been a hot sunny day in Phuket. The Windguru forecast looks good for the weekend, maybe a bit blowy next week but nothing too serious.

Poor Philippines is going to be hit again, though. Another storm called "Parma" is heading towards the north of the islands and on to Taiwan, and Parma is expected hit hit category 5, which is bad. It's not heading west though, so I don't believe we will see any effects here. The Tropical Storm Risk website is a great place for storm information. You can also register for email updates.

• Typhoon Parma - Updates on Tropicalstormrisk.com

The new storm is very clear and very big on the satellite link above too.

And if that was not enough, there have been 2 earthquakes and a tsunami this week. First, a quake in the pacific ocean on Tuesday night (17:48 GMT.. I guess that would actually be Tuesday morning in Samoa), creating a tsunami that hit Tonga and Samoa - see BBC Report.

And then, yesterday afternoon local time (10:00 GMT) a big quake (See USGS details) in southern Sumatra - lots of damage - BBC Report. Epicenter about 1,00km south of here. There was apparently a tsunami alert issued here in Phuket, though I did not know about it. Alert was quickly withdrawn. Good to know people are on their toes. Updates from Sumatra are talking about more than 450 deaths - new BBC Report. New Update... over 750 deaths.. updated Thursday evening.... over 1100 Friday morning. Grim

Meanwhile back in Phuket. Still sunny, hoping for a beautiful weekend. Update later on Thursday - well, not all sun, had some rain later afternoon and in the night...