Typhoon NORU Will Affect Southern Japan For 48 Hours

AUGUST 5, 2017, SATURDAY 

The storm is intensifying. Typhoon NORU is feeding hungrily off the 30 degrees Celsius warm waters off the southern Japan coast. It is turning into a category 2 hurricane with winds, sustained, of 150 kmph, gusting upto 200 kmph.

It is roughly 125 kilometres south of Ibusuki, a little town on the southern tip of Kyushu island. NORU will take about 18 hours to travel that distance for landfall into mainland Japan, tomorrow morning at 9 AM local time (about 0100 UTC, Sunday).

The storm will slam head on into Ibusuki as a category 2 storm.

As said earlier, it is a slow moving storm at present. So Kyushu will bear for a long time the torrential rains and strong gusts as NORU takes its own sweet time walking by.

After slicing through the eastern coast of Kyushu, the storm will pass through western Shikoku, onto southwest Honshu before entering the Sea of Japan as a weakening tropical storm on Tuesday, August 8, 2017.

So a large swathe of southern Japan is in a thorough drenching, landslides, flooding, and wind-caused damage for almost 48 hours, Sunday morning to early Tuesday morning.

We have relied on the track forecast as laid down by the European model, ECMWF. The JTWC largely agrees. But the HWRF (Hurricane Weather Research Forecasting) model has serious difference of opinion with the JTWC and ECMWF. It believes NORU will nudge along the eastern coast of Japan before swinging back into the Pacific Ocean off Tokyo albeit greatly weakened.

SEE HWRF TRACK.....

https://twitter.com/weatherxwf/status/893371528187793408

Typhoon NORU To Move Through Kyushu, SW Honshu

AUGUST 4, 2017, FRIDAY 

Typhoon NORU may have weakened to a category 1 hurricane but in the coming hours it will intensify again (winds of 160 kmph, gusts upto 200 kmph) as it batters the islands of Japanese archipelago.

Hardened storm chasers may belittle NORU for falling from a super typhoon to a mere category 1 storm but it still packs a punch. When it slices through the densely populated Kyushu island it will have winds of 140 kmph, gusts upto 185 kmph.

For people in cities like Nagasaki, Hiroshima it means trouble. More problematic will be the accompanying rainfall.

NORU is a slow moving storm. It will take almost 48-72 hours to move through the northern Ryukyu islands into Kyushu. Only after it moves through mainland Japan will it gain speed as it ploughs through Kyushu and southwestern Honshu into the Sea of Japan.

NORU will enter Kyushu only in the early hours of August 6, local time. Till then the flails of the storm will keep lashing southern Kyushu.

Slow moving storm means prolonged agony for the areas affected.

Southern Japan, South Korea In Trouble As Intensifying Typhoon NORU Comes

AUGUST 2, 2017, WEDNESDAY

Though no longer a super typhoon, NORU is causing shivers in Japan and South Korea. It is moving in a northwesterly direction and will begin to affect Japanese territory only after 2-3 days. But the sea surface temperature near the coast of Japan being warm at 31 degrees centigrade, this will prove like a booster dose of vitamins to the storm.

It is likely to pass by the island of Amami Oshima as a category 4 hurricane with winds in excess of 200 km/h, gusts upto 250 km/h.

Most forecast models, including the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, agree that NORU will slice through the numerous Japanese islands, between Kyushu and Okinawa. Then it will curve and move between the Japanese island of Kyushu and the southeastern coast of South Korea into the Sea of Japan.

The problem is it is going to take 2-3 days starting August 5 to do so. So in these 3 days it is going to affect southern Japan badly. Worst hit will be Kyushu island.

Many cities on the South Korean coast too will be affected, including Busan. 

NORU is going to cause destruction with its strong winds, torrential rainfall and the rough high waves which the typhoon will whip up.

For folks in the Indian subcontinent, as long the west Pacific Ocean is hurling massive typhoons one after another, the Indian Ocean, especially the northern part, will remain subdued. So expect low monsoon activity in South Asia in the next few days. We have observed over the years that the west Pacific Ocean and northern Indian Ocean play a see-saw between them. When one is active, the other turns mild.

It is the western Pacific which is in active mode presently, with tropical cyclones NESAT, HAITANG and NORU (NORU ate up on other nearby storm called KULAP recently in the Fujiwhara Effect). Another one called NALGAE is brewing already and will sail past northern Japan in a few days.  Indian monsoon is in a subdued mode as a result.

Satellite image of typhoon NORU taken at 4:30 AM UTC, August 2, 2017.

The expected track of typhoon NORU according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, JMA.

Track and intensity forecast of typhoon NORU by the JTWC.

Typhoon NORU Threatens Japan

AUGUST 1, 2017, TUESDAY 

Typhoon NORU lay about 1100 kilometres SSE of the southern coast of Japan in north west Pacific Ocean.

It is a category 3 hurricane presently. It intensified to a super typhoon yesterday but weakened a little as it has a patch of drier air. But as it nears the moist air near the Japanese coast an intensification is imminent again.

Most forecast models predict a hit on southern Japan on August 6-7.

The GFS model envisages a storm with a central minimum pressure of below 900 hPa before impact. With wind speed in excess of 220 km/h, gusts upto 260 km/h.