Typhoon Shanshan made landfall in southern Japan on Thursday, local time, causing at least three deaths and raising concerns of flooding, landslides, and severe damage.
Nearly 1 million people were evacuated, and 4 million were urged to leave before the storm made landfall on the island of Kyushu, just south of Nagasaki. The typhoon brought nearly 2 feet of rainfall—more than the August average—in parts of Miyazaki Prefecture, according to the country’s weather service.
“This is a dangerous system,” the Joint Typhoon Warning Center stated. ”Possible risks include damaging winds, heavy rainfall, storm surge, rough seas, mudslides, and flash flooding.”
Boasting maximum sustained wind speeds of 100 mph, its strength was equal to that of a Category 2 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. This is a slight decrease from 112 mph recorded earlier, which would have made it equal to a Category 3 hurricane.
However, wind gusts of up to 114 mph were recorded.
The storm rampaged through downtown Miyazaki, knocking down trees, tossing cars, and shattering windows in some buildings, according to the prefectural disaster management task force.
State broadcaster NHK showed a swollen river in Yufu, a popular hot spring town, just north of Miyazaki, where around a dozen people were reportedly thrown to the ground by the storm.
The typhoon was forecast to stretch across the southern half of the nation, covering major cities such as Osaka, Nagoya, and Kyoto, bringing rains and winds as far north as Tokyo.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency said in advisory No. 106 that the storm is expected to move north through northern Kyushu on Thursday, then change course to the east and move eastward through western Japan by Saturday.
“Special warnings have been issued for the Satsuma, Osumi, Tanegashima, and Yakushima regions,” the Japanese Meteorological Agency announced on social media platform X. ”Please be on high alert for high winds, high waves, and high tides.”
Over the next few days, Shanshan’s eye is expected to cut north across Kyushu near Kumamoto, still south of Nagasaki, and skirt the southeastern coastline of Shikoku and Honshu islands, moving past Osaka toward Nagoya.
In anticipation of its arrival, authorities previously ordered the evacuations of more than 800,000 people in Kagoshima Prefecture on Kyushu and the coastal prefectures of Aichi and Shizuoka, near Fuji.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency expected the storm to bring record heavy rainfall to Miyazaki Prefecture, located on the southeast corner of the island, and the risk of life-threatening landslides and floods was increasing. Storm surge warnings have also been issued.
Nearly 24 inches of rainfall is expected to drop on Kyushu in the next 24 hours. Radar imagery showed the southern half of Kyushu under rain, pouring at a rate of more than half an inch per hour.
“Maximum caution is required given that forecasts are for strong winds, high waves, and high tides that have not been seen thus far,” Satoshi Sugimoto, the agency’s chief forecaster, previously said at a news conference.
Typhoon Shanshan arrived in Japan one week after Typhoon Ampil, which also reached the size of a Category 2 hurricane and caused some transportation disruptions, evacuations, and blackouts. However, Ampil never officially made landfall.
