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from the plan-for-the-worst;-hope-for-the-best dept.
A powerful typhoon buffeted Japan's eastern coast on Saturday evening, prompting local authorities to issue early evacuation orders, with western areas recently devastated by floods and landslides in the storm's crosshairs.
Typhoon Jongdari, packing winds of up to 180 kilometres (110 miles) an hour, is forecast to make landfall on the country's main island on Saturday night or early Sunday, according to Japan's Meteorological Agency.
[...] Typhoon Jongdari is expected to barrel towards the western Chugoku region Sunday, where record rainfall earlier this month unleashed flooding and landslides, killing around 220 people and leaving more than 4,000 survivors still living in temporary shelters.
The weather agency warned of heavy rain, landslides, strong winds and high waves, and urged people to consider early evacuation.
"We want people especially in the downpour-hit regions to pay close attention to evacuation advisories," meteorological agency official Minako Sakurai told reporters.
[...] More than 410 domestic flights have been cancelled so far because of Typhoon Jongdari, while ferry services connecting Tokyo with nearby islands were also cancelled due to high waves, news reports said.
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-disaster-hit-japan-braces-powerful-typhoon.html
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 30 2018, @12:54PM (2 children)
Demonstrably bunkum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon#Records [wikipedia.org]
Note the steady decrease, despite better reporting in modern times (until the satellite era, only those that made landfall or inconvenienced ships were recorded, yet numbers of recorded major storms are higher).
Also, despite the hype, this wasn't much as these storms go. It hasn't developed a well-defined low pressure center as a proper hurricane always does. And if you want major Pacific storms right now, there's a much better-organized system stalled atop the Aleutians (and over in the Atlantic, another south of Iceland, but that's present pretty much all the time).
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/orthographic=-197.83,38.84,480/loc=-175.257,45.841 [nullschool.net]
Not to mention the 4 or 5 massive systems that routinely cruise around Antarctica. (Or, why sailing around Cape Horn was extremely risky.) Or the gigantic storm that meandered across Hudson Bay about a month ago, while all eyes were again on Japan.
Fact is these are news because the hurricane belt happens to be in the same latitude as the tropical paradise belt, so a lot of people live there. You never hear about the vastly larger storms that commonly hit the middle of nowhere. Here's one... "The Storm of the Century, 1949" (Wyoming PBS). According to the weather maps of the time, this was actually a hurricane. Over land. In winter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl6Iz4dXGdg [youtube.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 30 2018, @05:10PM (1 child)
I'm not sure what you're replying to, so I'll just say that while I lived there we expected to have them every year. They were major storms, but rarely caused many deaths. And I was young enough so that I can't be more detailed than that.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:47AM
Whatever random shit came into my head :) Yeah, kinda like going OMG Moar Blizzards!! where I live. Uh, it's the northern wastes, in winter we get blizzards... anywhere from none to several. Very rarely someone dies of it, but usually it's some tenderfoot being stupid above and beyond.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.