Japan's Typhoon Hagibis triggers deadly floods and landslides
Damaged houses caused by weather patterns from Typhoon Hagibis in Ichihara, Chiba prefecture. Photo: Jiji Press/AFP via Getty Images
Typhoon Hagibis triggered deadly floods and landslides as it swept over Japan Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The latest: Japan’s chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told AP at least 7 people were dead and 15 others were missing after the severe storm. It left some 376,000 homes without power and 14,000 homes had no running water, per AP. More than 6 million people were ordered to evacuate as rivers in areas including Tokyo burst their banks amid heavy rain, the WSJ notes.
The big picture: Typhoon Hagibis made landfall on Saturday as a Category 2 storm in Honshu, Japan's largest and most populated island, per the Washington Post and the NYT.
- The typhoon reached wind speeds of 140 mph as it dumped huge amounts of rain across the country, with 3 feet falling in the town of Hakone, near Mount Fuji — "the highest total ever recorded in Japan over 48 hours," the BBC reports.
- Hagibis was moving north early Sunday and was forecast to return to over the North Pacific later in the day, per the BBC.
Background: Hagibis' 90 mph boost last week from a tropical storm to a Category 5, 160-mph storm on Monday "marked the speediest leap in storm strength in more than 23 years in that part of the world," the Capital Weather Gang reports.
Go deeper: Super Typhoon Hagibis moves ominously toward Tokyo