Tropical Storm Harriet of 1962
The many news reports about the upcoming tropical storm Pabuk, which can cause a lot of nuisance and damage, occasionally mention the deadliest to date. tropical storm Harriet in Thailand, who swept across southern Thailand in 1962.
History
Tropical Storm Harriet is described on Wikipedia as follows:
“The weather system, which would later be called Tropical Storm Harriet, formed off the west coast of the Philippines on October 19, 1962. The system continued to the northwest and then moved southwest from the coast into the South China Sea. The storm spent several days in the open ocean, unable to strengthen into a tropical depression.
Initially, the storm moved northward into Vietnam on October 23, but quickly turned back westward and slowly increased in strength as it crossed the South China Sea. On the afternoon of October 25, the system became so strong that it could be called a tropical storm and was named Harriet.
Winds peaked at 95 km/h and reached mainland Thailand in Thailand's Nakhon Si Thammarat province on October 25. After traversing the country, Harriet weakened to a record low on October 25 in the open waters of the Indian Ocean. The storm dissipated east of the Nicobar Islands on October 26.
Damage and casualties
Tropical Storm Harriet has disastrously claimed the lives of at least 769 residents with another 142 missing from Thailand's southern provinces. Damage at that time was estimated at more than $34,5 million (1962 USD) to government buildings, agriculture, homes and fishing vessels.”
Finally
Let's hope that Tropical Storm Harriet will remain the most disastrous in Thailand and thus not be surpassed by the upcoming Tropical Storm Pabuk.
A considerably stronger cyclone hit Thailand in 1989. In November of that year, this storm made landfall in Chumpon province with winds of up to 185 km per hour. More than 800 people died and the damage amounted to USD 500 million.
See the link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Gay_(1989)
The year 1989 was indeed a dramatic year. The storm at the time caused the drilling ship of the company I worked for (Unocal Thailand; now Chevron Thailand) to disappear into the waves. The ship worked on the Platong field (Platong-14). After this terrible accident, Unocal set up a system to monitor the course of tropical storms entering the Gulf and step-by-step evacuate all offshore installations to eventually shut down operations completely. PTTEP has taken over this.
Two picture sources illustrate a few things:
1) https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/OCHA_ROAP_StormTracks_v6_161012.pdf.
The chance that South Thailand in particular will be hit by a typhoon or tropical storm from the Pacific Ocean is many times smaller than countries such as Vietnam or the Philippines.
Pabuk made landfall in the Philippines in December as a tropical storm named Usman, causing much human suffering as a result of landslides
2) http://rdo.psu.ac.th/sjstweb/journal/31-2/0125-3395-31-2-213-227.pdf
Figure 1 shows that tropical storms from the Pacific Ocean can reach southern Thailand in the cool dry season and northern Thailand in the rainy season
This knowledge will most likely have to be adjusted due to further global warming.