Well, that turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Super Typhoon Melor tried to push over the mountains to get me, but ended up turning, and trundling up the middle of Japan (Ha! Just scared of me!). Well, this means that Kashiwazaki did not get struck full-on by the Typhoon, instead we got the slightly weaker western edge of it.
Not only that, but for a Typhoon, it is shifting! Heading along its path at a fairly brisk 50 kph!
Basically, quite a bit of rain, some strong winds, but really nothing devastatingly hairy to worry about. I almost feel let down by it all. Still. It has left a trail of mess as it passes over Japan!
So far, 1 dead when his motorbike hit a fallen tree. And a reported 18 injured. Though that is likely to rise. *edit. Now risen to 2 dead with another being clobbered by a branch.*
At the moment, quite a few homes have been damaged, such as having their roofs blown off, roads washed away by flash-floods, and several thousand homes have been left without power. Having said that, that is not a surprise. The Japanese have, in the past, spent a lot of time stringing power cables up from poles, rather than bury them like we do in England. However, in Kashiwazaki, as part of the governments stimulus, and because it might work out better, the city is spending quite a bit of cash burying cables underground, in flexible pipes. The flexible pipes should, in theory, bend, rather than break in an earthquake! Well, there we go. My first typhoon.
It has been a massive inconvenience. 315 flights cancelled, the Shinkansen network has been halted, and local railways have either been stopped, or severely delayed. It is understandable for the local trains, Japan uses a smaller gauge for its local services, and they can be pushed off the rails!
The people I do feel sorry for, are the people in northern Philippines. Typhoon Parma has now been downgraded to tropical storm, but this storm has passed over the north 3 times! And right now, it is sat over the Philippines, just raining!
However, this may not yet be over for Japan. The Typhoon season is drawing to a close, but we are now seeing 2 more systems forming at the moment in the Pacific, off the Philippines. We will see what happens with them!
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