10:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, Japan time: Okinawa has entered Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness 1. Destructive 58-mph winds or greater anticipated within 12 hours.
The magic hour when flights into and out of Naha International Airport are concerned seems to be 2 p.m. All flights serving Naha through the airports curfew have been canceled.
Dave Ornauer has been with Stars and Stripes since March 5, 1981. One of his first assignments as a beat reporter in the old Japan News Bureau was “typhoon chaser,” a task which he resumed virtually full time since 2004, the year after his job, as a sports writer-photographer, moved to Okinawa and Ornauer with it.
As a typhoon reporter, Ornauer pores over Web sites managed by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center as well as U.S. government, military and local weather outlets for timely, topical information. Pacific Storm Tracker is designed to take the technical lingo published on those sites and simplify it for the average Stripes reader.
