Hot day after Super Typhoon Hagibis

Super Typhoon Hagibis is gone. In Hamamatsu, it started raining in the evening the day before yesterday. We had heavy rain accompanied with strong wind until yesterday evening, however, the rain weakened after 18:00. I was relieved then though the wind was still blowing violently. While I was watching some films with a headphone, I could take off my mind from it. When I went to bed, I didn’t need to worry about a power outage anymore.

The typhoon made a landfall on the Izu Peninsula in eastern Shizuoka Prefecture around 19:00. Then it moved toward the Kanto area including Tokyo. When I woke up this morning, it was fine. As I was at home all day yesterday, I went out for several hours during the daytime. The sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky. The temperature was nearly 30 degrees. It was too hot in the middle of October. The Magome River, whose water level once increased to a dangerous level, seemed normal today. Yesterday, the city sent a message to our cell phones to urge people living near the river to evacuate.

According to the website of NHK (national broadcasting organization), 21 people died, and 16 people are missing (as of 16:41, October 13). There are also 166 people who are injured. I have also learned that in several areas such as Hakone, Ichiyama in Izu, and Kawauchi Village in Fukushima Prefecture, the precipitation of these one to two days was record-breaking and amounted to 30 - 40% of annual precipitation. And enbankments in 21 rivers collapsed in Tohoku and Kanto Districts and Nagano (City). In recent years, there have been too many “record-breaking” disasters. The politicians should take the climate crisis and Greta Thunberg's speech seriously and take concrete measures.