Super Typhoon Shoved Huge Boulder Onto Philippines Beach
Devastation caused by the typhoon in Philippines. Reuters

Typhoon Haiyan was probably the most powerful and devastating storms that this year has ever seen. It is reported that the waves from the storm were powerful enough to result in a humongous boulder being washed up on the shores of a beach in Philippines.

Geoscientists like Mike Engel at the University of Cologne in Germany are of the opinion that the boulder that washed up on the beach is one of the largest ever to be shifted by a storm. The boulder was reportedly found by a local fisherman, who then related the location and size to Engels and his colleagues.

Initial satellite images of the storm, both before and after, revealed that the storm carried the boulder to a total of 45 metres along the beach. The rock was measured to nine metres wide and it weighed a total of 180 metric tonnes.

Researchers have been trying to analyse how an object of such an immense size and weight could be moved by a storm for such a considerable distance. After analysing the data, scientists opined that the storm may have created a tsunami-like wave, which had the intensity as well as the power to shift a rock of that size and magnitude.

This incident has lead scientists to believe that other rock movements, believed to have been made in the past by tsunamis might actually have been caused by super storms like the Haiyan. The evidence collected from this incident has thrown new light on the structure and intensity of super storms.