Typhoon

Last Thursday a strong typhoon was forecast to hit the Kanto region. Although Japan has 10 or so typhoons each autumn, it has been a couple of years since the last typhoon that hit Tokyo directly.

Everyone took the warning seriously. Normal programing on NHK was replaced by continuous coverage of the storm. Most people left work early and went straight home to sit it out. They expected the trains to stop running when the storm hit and didn't want to be stranded.

This is a false-color satelite radar image showing the storm over Japan on Thursday night. The forecast proved very accurate, except that the typhoon moved slower and arrived later than expected. Since I live a short subway ride from work I stayed at work until 8pm. When I cam home the town was very quiet and there were broken umbrellas cast about the pavement. Japanese littering rules are clearly suspended during potential natural disasters!

The center of the typhoon made landfall in Izu in the evening and the eye of the storm passed directly over central Izu where Rika's mum lives. I was a bit concerned about Rika's Mum since the hills in Izu are prone to landslides and flood damage, and the rice is just about ready for harvesting. Also they have suffered disasters from typhoons in the past. But apparently there was no major damage, although some rain leaked into one of her windows.

I downloaded these maps from the Japanese met office at that time. This storm was strong but not super strong - but on the other hand it was slow so the rainfall was more concentrated. Izu city received 500mm of rain in 24 hours, much of it concentrated in a few hours. 　Thats 2/3 of the rain London typically receives in a year! (annual rainfall c.750mm). These radar images show the rainfall. The detailed image below shows rain falling in Tokyo at a rate of 30mm/h. 　

Since the Typhoon arrived at night there wasn't much to see or photograph. So we just watched reports on TV and the pressure on our barometer. The drop in pressure as the storm approached was dramatic. It literally fell off the scale of my barometer!　

So the lowest pressure we reecorded was just under 980 hPa. The centre of the low pressure area was about 960hPa and this went past a few tens of km to the west of Tokyo in the early morning.

I didn't see much storm damage apart from the umbrellas. But therse was a lot of small debris and litter scattered across the streets, which is unusual for Tokyo. It was quickly swept up. We are going down to Izu today to help with the rice harvest. So I'll update with a damage report later.