Typhoon Roke is expected to pass through the greater Tokyo area later today and head up toward the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant after causing 1.1 million people to be evacuated in central Japan.
The approaching typhoon brought heavy rain and fears of landslides and flash flooding, threatening the industrial city of Nagoya. The storm has already triggered floods that left two people missing.
The storm has already dumped 400 millimeters (16 inches) of rain over the past 24 hours on the southern province of Miyazaki. The agency warned of downpours over a wide area of the country on Wednesday, saying as much as 50 millimeters of rain could fall in an hour.
The Meteorological Agency called for vigilance, especially on the Kii Peninsula, which suffered devastation from a deadly typhoon earlier this month, as dams of mud created by in Wakayama Prefecture and elsewhere were on the verge of bursting after downpours from Typhoon Roke brought water levels to the brim Tuesday morning.
Disaster management minister Tatsuo Hirano said in the morning that rainwater accumulating behind the mud dams caused earlier this month by Typhoon Talas in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture, has “gradually begun to overflow.”
Roke comes three weeks after typhoon Talas dumped record rainfall on southern Japan, causing mudslides and floods that killed 67 people and left 26 missing. Roke, moving northeast at 35 kilometers per hour, is forecast to take three days to pass over Japan and its storm warning area may cover most of the country in that time, according to the meteorological agency’s website.
“The major difference between the two typhoons was Talas was slow-moving over the Kii peninsula, dumping rain in the same area, while Roke is fast moving,” said Kenji Okada, a forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency. “Roke is bringing strong gusts and dumping rain in a wide region.”
Watch accompanying video of Typhoon
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