Heavy rains in Japan, urging hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate

On Friday, hundreds of thousands of residents in Japan were affected by evacuation orders linked to the passage of Tropical Storm Mawar, which caused heavy rains, especially in the center and west of the country.

The eye of the typhoon, previously classified as a typhoon when it struck the US island of Guam in late May, was in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Japan on Friday.

Evacuation instructions – not mandatory – were issued Friday to more than 410,000 people in the city of Toyota, in Aichi Prefecture (center).

In the same department, 130,000 residents of Toyohashi have been affected by calls to evacuate accompanied by the maximum level of alert, according to public broadcaster NHK.

In Wakayama Prefecture (west), several streams overflow.

“We urge residents (in affected areas) to exercise extreme caution against risks of landslides, floods and river floods,” government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.

“Very heavy rain with thunderstorms is expected over a large part of Japan, from west to east, over the next three days,” he said.

JR Central Railways said on its website that high-speed trains (shinkansen) between Tokyo and Osaka have stopped.

More than 260 flights were canceled Friday in the country, according to NHK’s mid-afternoon finding.

Scientists said global warming increases the risk of heavy rains in Japan, as warmer air masses carry more vapor.

In July 2021, heavy rain caused a huge mudslide in the seaside resort of Atami (southwest of Tokyo), killing 27 people.

Large-scale floods in Kyushu (southwest Japan) claimed more than 80 lives in 2020, and two years ago, the archipelago witnessed the worst floods in decades, during which more than 200 people were killed in the west of the country.