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Japan's Typhoon Hagibis triggers deadly floods and landslides

Damaged houses caused by weather patterns from Typhoon Hagibis in Ichihara, Chiba prefecture.
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

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