Lots going on, humans continue to be better at killing each other than nature, but we can’t talk about that in the freedom soaked western world 😮 … however, since we can hype natural hazards all we like, the TLDR is southern Japan is going to be hit by a Typhoon tomorrow, Hawai’i is going to be hit by more rain from a decaying tropical system, there are yellow blobs of doom in the Atlantic (but they aren’t very doomy), and eruptions continue in Iceland.
Starting with Japan, Typhoon Shanshan should make landfall tomorrow on the southernmost main island of Kyushu as a Category 1 storm on our Saffir-Simpson scale. Here’s the impact swath using the Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast as of 5am Wednesday:
Economic impacts should be in the $2 to $4 Billion range. A key problem, as has been with so many recent storms, is going to be excess rain. Shanshan looks to spend over four days slowly moving north across southern Japan, and as those in the US Southeast found out with Debby, that can dump a lot of rain. So there will be inland flooding for sure, even if wind and coastal impacts should be somewhat light.
Moving east, Hawaii seems to have survived a near miss from Hurricane Hone with minimal damage (link to KHON). The biggest problem has been scattered power outages, rain and flooding, which has caused road closures. Unfortunately more is on the way as the decaying Gilma is due to pass over or just north of the Islands in 4-5 days.
The Atlantic continues to be quiet, although there are now a couple of “watch” areas on NHC’s Tropical Weather Outlook:
Neither area is an invest yet, or have any “magic words.” Nothing to worry about for a few days (if at all).
Moving to the North Atlantic, while I haven’t had the bandwidth to comment on it lately, large eruptions continue on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland (link to latest update in Icelandic, which is similar to Old Norse, it’s pretty easy to learn so get to work. Or if you are lazy most browsers these days have a translate function but that’s just for the slackers among you 😛 ). The famous Blue Lagoon resort is open at the moment, but there are many roads closed in the area.
Oh, and if that’s not enough, there is an Invest area in the Indian Ocean that looks to maybe be a depression as it enters the volatile Arabian Sea…
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Even though Shanshan (or in the sparse poetry of Japanese: typhoon #10) is taking aim for the southern coast of Kyushu – and is only a category 1 storm – thanks to two high pressure cells sitting off to either side of the main island acting as a channeling force (if I understand correctly) this thing is wrecking havoc with weather all across the mainland. Heavy rains have already lead to mudslides in Aichi and I’m sure a slew of them will pop up (or slide down) along the steep slopes of Shikoku. (They always do during a direct typhoon hit.) And there is river flooding taking out bridges as far north as Iwate. JR has suspended a number of shinkansen lines in West Japan for the duration of the storm.
As noted excess rain looks to be the problem rather than wind/surge/waves. I’m seeing 70cm to 100cm of five day rain estimates in places … (that’s upwards of 3 feet for those of you still stuck in the world of furlongs, hogsheads, and fortnights)