Early Bird Sonamu

   I've often remarked about how incredibly active the Northwest Pacific basin is. Well, true to form, its already started. Even as I was finishing up my last post on New Year's Eve this was out there:

   That is Invest 92W. On the 3rd JTWC declared it a tropical depression, 01W, and early on the 4th it became tropical storm Sonamu. This storm was always in a very hostile environment, so its peak intensity was only 45kts and about 990hPa. It received its last warning late on the 8th as its remnants headed for landfall on northwest Borneo. This over all lifetime of six days as a tropical cyclone, or over eight days when 92W is included, is actually quite long. Its start date of January 3rd is the earliest forming named storm in the Northwest Pacific since Typhoon Alice in 1979. However, this statistic is misleading since New Year's is an arbitrary date and Sonamu can really just be considered a storm from the same season as Wukong or Bopha. Below is Sonamu's track and a MODIS image taken at about its peak intensity on the 5th.