Nearly 100,000 evacuated as Typhoon Etau aims for Japan

Credits: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response
Around 73,000 people were instructed to evacuate their homes in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Tuesday as an approaching typhoon brought heavy rain to the area in central Japan.
Typhoon Etau is located south of the Japanese archipelago and moving north.
It is likely to come close to Japan on Wednesday morning and possibly make landfall, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
The agency has already issued heavy rain warnings for parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Shizuoka and Aichi prefectures, and is alerting people to severe rain over a swath of the country from Tokyo and its surrounding region to the main island of Kyushu in southwestern Japan.
If the typhoon moves northward on its projected course, it may make landfall on the Kii Peninsula at some point.
At 12 p.m., the typhoon was located about 430 kilometers west-northwest of Chichijima Island in the Ogasawara island chain, moving north at a speed of 25 km per hour.
The storm was packing winds of up to 126 kph with an atmospheric pressure of 990 hectopascals at its center.
In Hamamatsu, some homes appear to have been flooded because of the rain, according to the municipal government. Some roads have also been closed to traffic due to flooding.


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