Faith or whatever you wish to call it

In my relatively short stint in making myself informed about (or as the clairvoyant puts it - tracking) the weather, I have never come across a typhoon that moved so slowly, the process also weakening itself even before making landfall.

Lupit developed into a Category 4 typhoon while in the Pacific, slowly and menacingly moving towards the Philippines to finish off what Ondoy and Pepeng had earlier set out to do - lay waste to Luzon Island. The two earlier visitors (or bwisitors) were very efficient and any experienced military commander or Sun Tzu fanatic will tell you, very surgical in terms of strategy and tactics. Hit NCR first and hit it hard - at its weakest point, the drainage system. Devastating Metro Manila assures you that there won't be any help coming from it when the rest of Luzon is hit by the next wave, which happened to be Pepeng.

But destruction aside and climate change notwithstanding, doesn't it make you wonder what's keeping the typhoon Lupit from breaking out? Lupit is actually weakening while moving at a snail's pace. Is this normal behavior for a typhoon or is an unseen hand holding it down? I would like to believe that after all that people have been through, having our backs against the wall and being desperate for whatever can spare us from the impending onslaught, we decided to turn to God, to our faith in an Almigthy Being. Watching on TV and hearing the Catholic Church appeal to people to pray the Oratio Imperata and people actually doing it is but one example of how people decided to plead to a Higher Being, knowing it was scientifically, mathematically and maybe statistically improbable for a typhoon as strong as Lupit to slow down, barely grazing Luzon and weakening by itself.

Call it what you want. Be scientific and meteorological or whatever. For a lot of people it is only one thing and something they can hold on to - a miracle!