Pam is a tropical cyclone of category 5 strength, but is churning over waters that have high temperatures at depth, a phenomenon we seem to be seeing more often lately, as a result of anthropogenic global warming. That is why I call it “AGW Class.” Strong Category 5, deep heat enhanced. It is said that this is one of only 10 Category 5 storms recorded in the basin since good data are available. The Weather Underground has the story.

In addition, there are three other tropical cyclones extant in the Pacific.

Nathan is just on the Tropical Storm-Hurricane boundary and is heading for Cape York, Australia. Olwyn is a fully formed tropical cyclone (hurricane) with sustained winds at 85mph, and is busy menacing the west coast of Australia, which it will scrape over the next several hours, reaching Sharks Bay very soon and passing off the southwest corner of OZ over the weekend. But since that is so many time zones away we really have no idea when any of this will happen. Bavi is a tropical storm out in the Pacific heading roughly west by northwest. This storm may reach hurricane strength in a few day, but the forecast I saw is very uncertain.

And yes, there are views of the Earth that allow you to see all four storms at once. Here is one from the Climate Reanalyzer. The storms are marked but you should be able to spot them:

This one, that I got of Twitter, has the storms marked:

You don’t see this every day.