Super Typhoon Knocks Out Weather Sensors

By AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press Writer
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HONOLULU (AP) -- Typhoon Ioke knocked out Wake Island's weather sensors
on Thursday as it lashed the isle with some of the central Pacific's
fiercest winds in over a decade, the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters monitoring the 2.5-square-mile atoll's wind and temperature
gauges from Hawaii said the instruments blew out as the storm approached
with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and gusts of up to 190 mph.

The most recent data before the instruments failed indicated Ioke
slammed the island with 78 mph winds and 100 mph gusts, said Henry Lau,
a National Weather Service forecaster in Honolulu. That was before
Ioke's eye passed north of Wake Island, he said.

The Air Force evacuated all the roughly 200 residents of the isolated
atoll on Monday before the "super typhoon" neared. Only troops, Defense
Department civilian employees and military contractors live on the
island.


The storm is currently heading northwest toward Japan and is expected to
weaken in the coming days.

Ioke is the first Category 5 hurricane to develop in the central Pacific
since record keeping began in the early 1960s and is the most powerful
storm to pass through the region since hurricanes Emilia and Gilma, both
in July 1994.

Wake Island is a U.S. military refueling and research station about
2,300 miles west of Honolulu and 1,510 miles east of Guam.