The rain was minimal, but the wind was very strong and had this eerie howling sound,” Roberto Monterola, a disaster-mitigation officer in Catanduanes, told The Associated Press by

A powerful typhoon has wrecked houses, caused towering tidal surges and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to emergency shelters as it barreled across the northern Philippines in the sixth major storm to pound the Southeast Asian country in less than a month.