How big is humungous?

I’m sure some editor was waiting a long time to use “humungous” in a headline. Well, the story evidently arrived. Here it is, in the Boston Globe, Feb. 26, 2019: “Humongous typhoon hits Guam.”

The AP story reported: “The US territory of Guam was sideswiped by the beastly storm named Wutip on Saturday. It was whirling Monday morning about 300 miles west of the Mariana Islands, with 150-mile-per-hour sustained winds coiled tightly around its foreboding eye. Early Monday, it peaked at a Category-5 equivalent strength….” OK. Now we know. Humungous is beastly, has a foreboding eye, and has Category-5 sustained winds.

But wait. The end of the story reports: “The last such storm to skirt Guam was in 1953….The island dodged a bullet again this time, as the Guam Daily Post reports that no serious damage or injury occurred.”

File under: Humungous mistake: Typhoon did not hit Guam.