By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
The rain didn't build. It arrived.
On Thursday night, torrents hit Chiba prefecture east of Tokyo at a rate of 115mm an hour — roughly the average total rainfall the region expects for the whole of August, compressed into sixty minutes. By Friday, at least four people were dead, according to Al Jazeera and the BBC. Nearly 7,000 travelers were stranded at Narita International Airport. About 45,000 homes lost power, and evacuation orders went out to more than 400,000 people across Chiba and neighboring areas.
Officials called it "unprecedented" — a word used carefully in a country that has seen its share of typhoons and monsoon floods. Landslide warnings followed the deluge, and though the rain itself has since eased, the Guardian reports flooding risk remains high as saturated ground struggles to hold.
The timing compounded the misery. The storm struck during Obon, the Buddhist holiday week when millions of Japanese travel to visit ancestral graves and family homes — one of the busiest travel periods of the year, now snarled by stranded flights and shuttered roads.
Japan's disaster response is practiced, its warning systems among the most advanced in the world. But practiced systems still can't stop a storm from stalling over one prefecture and dropping a month of rain before midnight. Search efforts and power restoration continue as authorities assess the full scope of damage.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE —
— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera, the BBC and The Guardian.
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