After peaking as a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds, Super Typhoon Ragasa made landfall in the southern Chinese city of Yangjiang in Guangdong Province on September 24 as a Category 3 storm with winds of 120 mph (195 km/h). Ragasa is being blamed for at least 29 deaths and damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to insurance broker Aon. A study released today as part of a new initiative at Imperial College London called the Climate Damage Tracker, which calculates the human and economic costs of climate change, found that climate change boosted Typhoon Ragasa’s winds by 7% and rainfall by 12% at landfall. This is equivalent to intensifying the storm from a weak to a strong Category 3. These factors combined to increase Ragasa’s damages by 36%, the scientists said.

A tropical wave that came off the coast of Africa on October 3 is expected to gradually develop over the coming week as it tracks westward to west-northwestward through the central tropical Atlantic. The wave has had strong model support for development as it nears the Lesser Antilles Islands in the October 9-11 timeframe, when wind shear over the disturbance is expected to be low to moderate. In their 8 a.m. EDT Friday Tropical Weather Outlook, the National Hurricane Center, or NHC, gave the disturbance two-day and seven-day odds of development of 0% and 40%, respectively. The next name on the Atlantic list of storms is Jerry.

NHC is also tracking an area of low pressure near the Bahamas. High wind shear should prevent development of this system, which has little model support for development. In their 8 a.m. EDT Friday Tropical Weather Outlook NHC gave the disturbance two-day and seven-days odds of development of 10%.