PAGASA, the Philippine weather agency, warned on Nov. 6 that a tropical depression east of the Philippines could intensify into a super typhoon. As of 5 p.m. that Friday the system sat about 2,865 kilometers east of Northern Luzon, outside the Philippine Area of Responsibility, with maximum sustained winds of 55 km/h and gusts to 70 km/h. It was moving northwest at about 30 km/h and gradually strengthening.
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A super typhoon needs sustained winds above 185 km/h, more than three times what the depression carried at its last report. That gap is why the warning is conditional. The agency is describing a ceiling the system could reach, not a forecast that it will get there on a fixed schedule.
John Manalo’s forecast and the Samuel name
Dan Madrazo of The Manila Times reported that PAGASA weather specialist John Manalo said the depression could intensify and reach the super typhoon category. Manalo said it might enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility as early as Sunday, Nov. 8, and that once inside, PAGASA would call it Samuel. The article gives no landfall forecast and no track beyond that possible Sunday entry, so the reports leave open whether the storm curves away or bears down on Luzon.
Names are assigned only on entry. Until then the system is simply a tropical depression in the open Pacific.
Distance and speed give a rough sense of the clock. At a steady 30 km/h, a system 2,865 kilometers away would need about four days to cover that ground in a straight line, and the Manila Times report points to a possible boundary crossing on Sunday, Nov. 8, a pace that implies the system would reach the boundary region days before any approach to land. That is arithmetic on reported figures, not a PAGASA arrival forecast, and the agency has not published a landfall estimate.
PAGASA’s wind thresholds for each category
The agency sorts storms by maximum sustained wind under a scheme it adopted on March 23, 2022. Its tropical cyclone classification lists a tropical depression at up to 62 km/h, a tropical storm at 62 to 88 km/h, a severe tropical storm at 87 to 117 km/h, a typhoon at 118 to 184 km/h and a super typhoon above 185 km/h. At 55 km/h the system is firmly in the first tier, which means it must clear four category boundaries before reaching the top. Forecasts of that kind of climb carry wide error bars, and PAGASA framed this one as a possibility rather than a certainty.
The cutoff for a tropical depression is shared across agencies. The U.S. National Hurricane Center’s glossary defines a depression as a cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 62 km/h or less, the same line PAGASA draws, which means the Pacific system’s 55 km/h reading would be classed the same way by either forecaster. The scales diverge higher up, so a storm that PAGASA calls a super typhoon can carry a different label elsewhere, and readers comparing coverage from different countries should check which agency’s thresholds a report is using before comparing storms.
Where an official bulletin would first appear
PAGASA publishes cyclone warnings through its severe weather bulletin page. When that page was checked at 12:19 a.m. on Nov. 7, it read “No Active Tropical Cyclone within the Philippine Area of Responsibility,” which fits the agency’s description of a system still outside the boundary. The agency’s home page showed no active warnings at the same check, and its most recent tropical cyclone article concerned Tropical Storm Maymay from Aug. 17, so nothing there had been updated for this system.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center, the U.S. military’s forecast unit for the western Pacific, runs its own track and intensity forecasts at its public site, but its page returned only a title and navigation links when fetched, so no second agency’s numbers could be compared.
Gusts matter as much as sustained winds for anyone planning around a typhoon, and the report’s 70 km/h gust figure is a long way from damaging levels. Every consequential number in PAGASA’s warning depends on strengthening that had not yet occurred as of the 5 p.m. position on Nov. 6, and the Manila Times report describes the system only as gradually strengthening, with no timetable for when it might reach typhoon strength.
For readers in the Philippines, the practical signal is timing. Manalo’s mention of a possible Sunday entry means the first official bulletin carrying a name could come within days of the Nov. 6 report, and local forecasts would then add the wind and rainfall detail that the current reports lack. Until the system crosses the boundary, the Manila Times account and the agency’s classification table are the only numbers on record.
Two questions remain open. One is whether the depression crosses into the Philippine Area of Responsibility on Nov. 8 as Manalo said it might. The other is how many of the 130 km/h separating its current 55 km/h winds from the super typhoon line it can close before then.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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