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Typhoon Nanmadot It made landfall in southwestern Japan on Sunday night, with authorities urging millions of people to avoid the storm’s strong winds and heavy rain.
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said the storm made landfall at about 7pm local time (1000GMT), with its eyewall reaching near the city of Kagoshima.
Wind gusts of up to 234 km/h (146 mph) brought as much as 500 mm of rain to parts of southwestern Kyushu in less than 24 hours.
At least 20,000 people have spent the night in shelters in Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures in Kyushu, and the Japan Meteorological Agency has issued a rare “special warning” — a warning issued only when conditions are forecast to occur once in decades.
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National broadcaster NHK, which collects information from local authorities, said more than 7 million people had been told to move to shelters or sturdy buildings to weather the storm.
Evacuation warnings are not mandatory, and authorities sometimes struggle to persuade people to move to shelters ahead of extreme weather.
They tried to allay their concerns about the weather system over the weekend.
“Please stay away from dangerous places, and if you feel any danger, please evacuate,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida tweeted after a government meeting on the storm.
“Evacuation at night can be dangerous. Please move to a safe place while it’s still light outside.”
The JMA warned the region could face “unprecedented” danger from strong winds, storm surge and heavy rain, and called the storm “very dangerous.”
“The areas affected by the storm are experiencing unprecedented rainfall,” Hiroshi Kato, head of the Weather Monitoring and Warning Center, told reporters on Sunday.
“Especially in areas with landslide warnings, there is a high probability that some type of landslide has already occurred.”
He urged “maximum caution even in areas where disasters would not normally occur.”
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By Sunday night, the utility said nearly 200,000 homes in the area were without power.
Trains, flights and ferries were canceled until the storm passed, and even some convenience stores — often open all day and considered lifelines in a disaster — closed.
‘Highest possible caution’
“Unprecedented high winds, high waves and high tides are likely to occur in the southern Kyushu region,” the JMA said on Sunday, urging residents to be “extremely vigilant as possible.”
On the ground, an official in Izumi, Kagoshima City, said by Sunday afternoon, the situation was deteriorating rapidly.
“The wind became very strong. The rain was also very strong,” he told AFP. “It was pitch black outside. Visibility was almost zero.”
In Minamata, Kyushu, fishing boats tied up for safety swayed in the waves, which washed a boardwalk with surf and rain strips.
The storm weakened slightly as it approached land, and was expected to turn northeastward and sweep the main Japanese island early Wednesday.
Japan is currently in typhoon season and faces about 20 such storms each year, often with heavy rains that cause landslides or flash floods.
In 2019, Typhoon Hagibis hit Japan while hosting the Rugby World Cup, killing more than 100 people.
A year ago, typhoon Jebi shut down Osaka’s Kansai airport, killing 14 people.
In 2018, floods and landslides during the annual rainy season in western Japan killed more than 200 people.
Scientists say climate change is increasing the severity of storms and causing extreme weather such as heatwaves, droughts and flash floods to become more frequent and intense.
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