Typhoon Vongfong Latest News Update: Storm Weakens But Still Batters Japan
Typhoon Vongfong weakened as it headed off Japan's northeast coast early Tuesday but still had enough power to batter the Tohoku region, leaving one person dead, two missing and 93 injured.
In its latest report on Tuesday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency said the strongest typhoon to hit Japan this year was downgraded to a tropical storm but still packed maximum sustained winds of 110 kph (70 mph) and gusts of up to 145 kph (90 mph) as it moved towards the coast of northeast Japan, a region already devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The storm earlier struck western Japan, killing a 90-year-old man in a field irrigation ditch in Tottori prefecture, public broadcaster NHK said. One person each was missing in Ehime and Shizuoka prefectures, it added.
Vongfong unleashed torrential rain on Tokyo through the night and snarled traffic in the capital and other areas on Monday, the last day of a three-day holiday weekend. More than 600 flights were cancelled nationwide and more than 60 cancellations were expected on Tuesday, NHK said.
On Tuesday morning, the sun returned over Tokyo and commuter train service was largely back in service.
At the height of Vongfong's fury on Monday, more than 150,000 homes lost power, NHK said. Before the storm made landfall, more than 800,000 people nationwide had been urged to leave their homes.
Concern was raised that the heavy rain could cause an overflow of radioactive water stored at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in the Tohoku region. To ease this concern, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the plant, said it had increased water transfer and storage capacity to prevent such overflow.
The storm caused the postponement of a Monday baseball playoff game in Osaka for Japan's Pacific League, between the Orix Buffaloes and the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters – the first time a Nippon Professional Baseball playoff game was postponed due to bad weather.
Japan was still trying to recover from the devastation caused by Typhoon Phanfone when Vongfong struck, barreling across the island of Okinawa early Sunday, with wind gusts of over 89 kph and rainfall measuring over 75 millimeters.
It earlier blasted through the Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan over the weekend with wind speeds of as high as 143 kph at the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. About 500 mm of rain fell on Saturday as fierce winds brought power outages across the island.
Vongfong, which means "wasp" in Cantonese, was earlier classified as a super-typhoon with an equivalent strength of a Category 5 hurricane as it recorded wind speeds of more than 257 kph.
"Vongfong became the strongest tropical cyclone we've had all year anywhere on Earth," AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jim Andrews said.
Vongfong surpassed the strength of Super Typhoon Genevieve which, at its most powerful, had sustained winds of 257 kph in the West Pacific.
Barely a week ago, Typhoon Phanfone hammered the same regions in Japan, unleashing more than 150 mm of rain. Eastern Japan, including the capital Tokyo, was drenched by 272 mm of rain at the height of Phanfone's fury.