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Supertyphoon Champi is maxing out the scale, with maximum sustained eyewall winds at 180 mph and gusts likely over 200 mph. It's meteorological perfection in the most sinister way possible. On Tuesday evening Eastern time, Champi was located near 17.4 degrees North latitude, 131.4 degrees East longitude. That put it in the northwest Pacific. Over the weekend, its buzzsaw eyewall skirted the southern side of Guam, sparing the island by only a few miles. Champi is a beautiful, mesmerizing, terrifying and awe-inspiring pageant of power and elegance. It's the atmosphere at its most dynamic, raw and extreme. The cyclone has to have an absolutely flawless, undisturbed balance. It's an extremely rare feat. A Category 5 is like a spinning top whirring on a table; even the slightest jiggle can knock it off-kilter – like bumping the table. There must be virtually no shear, or changing winds with height. The upper-level winds around the system must be relatively calm. It's incredible to think that the planet's most furious storms are born out of an abundance of calm. The waters must be exceptionally warm – upwards of 86 degrees – to be replete with "oceanic heat content," or heat energy for the typhoon to draw upon. The warm waters heat and moisten the air above. That air rushes into the building typhoon. As air nears the center of the storm, it expands due to the typhoon's low pressure. That expansion releases heat energy to the environment, encouraging air to rise and powering the storm. In theory, that air parcel (pocket) should cool, but it doesn't. Why? It's still being heated by the oceans below. The ocean is constantly re-heating the lower atmosphere – and energizing the storm – at the exact same rate the air is releasing heat energy into the storm. Most of the moisture in the air condenses and produces rain, releasing even more "latent heat" to the environment. Near the typhoon's center, there's a lot of heat energy. So much so that the air rises, as if in a chimney. That rising air literally lifts air up and away from the surface. There's literally less air, and therefore less air weight, or *pressure*, at the center of the storm. Most Category 5-equivalent typhoons are "missing" about 10-12 percent of the air from the middle. It's that deficit of air that behaves like a vacuum of sorts. Air from outside the storm rushes in to fill the void, like water spiraling into a sink drain. The greater the deficit, the faster the winds. The wind increases exponentially closer to the center of the storm; Category 5-equivalent typhoons have winds over 157 mph. So why doesn't the eye, with the "missing" air, just "fill in?" Because the typhoon is rotating so furiously! The air is flung outwards by the "centrifugal force" at the exact same rate it's being pulled inwards by the "pressure gradient force." The air can never fully reach the eye – and instead it swirls around and around, like water perpetually sloshing around the edges of a toilet. We call that "cyclostrophic balance." Thus, the eye doesn't fill in. The storm charges on. And – until the system is torn apart by disruptive upper-level winds or moves over cooler waters/land – it continues. Champi is a symptom of El Niño, a broader Earth cycle that flipflops every 2-7 years. El Niño (the opposite of La Niña) is characterized by a warming of water temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. That heats the air above, causing it to rise. Rising air makes more hurricanes – and they can become stronger due to the hot waters. During the strong El Niño season of 1997, EIGHT typhoons (Keith, Joan, Ivan, Ginger, Winnie, Rosie, Nestor and Isa) attained Category 5-equivalent status in the western North Pacific!