Typhoon Fung-Wong Heads Towards the Philippines: AI Models Discussion 11-7-2025

Fung-Wong (32W) is now a typhoon as it moves across the West Pacific and heads towards the Philippines. It is a very large storm, with expansive outer bands, though it has slowly been consolidating more inner-core convection. Google DeepMind continues to show extreme intensification in the short-term to a supertyphoon (Figure 1).

There is some reason to be a little bit skeptical of how quickly DeepMind/FNV3 is intensifying the system. For one, it is very large, and larger systems tend to take longer to consolidate (due to conservation of angular momentum). DeepMind has been insisting on rapid intensification for many cycles, and so far the storm has been slower to intensify than forecast (Figure 2).

The large-scale environment is still generally supportive of intensification. The storm is under a large upper anticyclone, which should lead to favorable outflow as the secondary circulation intensifies. One thing that is worth noting, however, is that the storm will be slightly offset from the center of the upper anticyclone (Figure 3), so there could be some easterly shear at times as it approaches the Philippines.

We’ll see how strong it ends up getting, but a strong typhoon impact is likely in the Philippines, who are still dealing with the cleanup from Kalmaegi, which impacted a little further south. After impacting the Philippines, Fung-Wong should start to turn north ahead of a trough. It will be in a weakened state, but could still bring a lot of heavy rain to Taiwan (Figure 4).

The heavy rain will likely be enhanced by the mountainous terrain of Taiwan as it interacts with the easterly flow around the circulation of Fung-Wong, and also by the synoptic setup, as the TC is located in the right entrance region of a jet streak (Figure 5).

We'll keep a close eye on Fung-Wong as it impacts the Philippines over the weekend.