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The
First Super Typhoon of 2014 Is Bearing Down on Japan
By
Eric Holthaus
7
July, 2014
Japan is under threat from the strongest storm so far this year in the Pacific Ocean.
The
storm called Neoguri—Korean for raccoon—reached Super Typhoon
status early Monday Japan time. It now packs sustained winds of 150
miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour), according to the U.S.
Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
It
appears Neoguri will make a direct hit on the island of Miyakojima
(which has about 55,000 people) early Tuesday Japan time, battering
the shore with waves up to 40 feet high. Japan has issued an
emergency typhoon warning—tokubetsu
keihō 特別警報—for
Miyakojima, the first time such a high-level warning has been issued
since a special alert system was introduced last year, according
to The Japan News.
Though
it should track farther west than predicted in earlier forecasts,
Neoguri could also be one of the strongest storms that nearby
Okinawa—an island of 1.3 million people—has experienced
since comprehensive
records began
in 1945. The U.S. military began
evacuating aircraft on
Sunday from the biggest Air Force base in the Pacific in preparation
for the storm, which Brig. Gen. James Hecker said would be the
strongest typhoon to hit the island in 15 years. In a
message to
Kadena Air Force Base on Saturday, Hecker said simply: “This is not
just another typhoon.”
The
storm will impact the Japanese mainland later in the week, making
landfall near Nagasaki around midday Wednesday as a still-intense
storm bearing sustained winds of 125 mph (200 kph), and passing over
most of Japan during the following 24 hours as it weakens. The storm
is forecasted to still be close to typhoon strength near Tokyo on
Thursday afternoon. Heavy rain, coastal storm surge, and mudslides
are expected to be the primary risk.
Image courtesy of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center
Earlier
in its life, Neoguri strengthened from Tropical Storm to the
equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane in less than 24 hours over some
of the warmest waters on Earth, east of the Philippines. Hurricane
and Typhoon are different
names for the same phenomenon: an intense ocean storm that
draws its energy from warm water and a core of rotating
thunderstorms, typically more than one hundred miles wide.
Believe
it or not, it could have been worse. Early forecasts for Neoguri were
simply monstrous: The Euro model, consistently the most accurate at
forecasting tropical systems, at
one point forecasted the
storm to deepen into one of the most intense ever recorded in the
Pacific and for its circulation to swell to hundreds of miles across.
The
huge size forecast has proven accurate, with meteorologists making
comparisons to 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, which devastated parts of
the U.S. East Coast:
On Saturday, Astronaut Reid Wiseman captured a stunning view of Neoguri from the International Space Station:
However, despite an impressive appearance from space, the storm has had trouble maintaining a persistent ring of intense thunderstorms in its eyewall over the past day or so, a sign that a weakening trend could be approaching more quickly than anticipated.
Courtesy of NOAA
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