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No typhoon, but you'd not know it in the Kanto Plain

By Dave Ornauer
Published: April 3, 2012

One would think a typhoon is pounding the Tokyo area, given weather forecasts and what the Kanto Plain has experienced/is experiencing on a wild, windy Tuesday. It's not a typhoon, though news reports are calling this the strongest storm to hit the capital since 1959.

"it just came out of nowhere," Nile C. Kinnick High School teacher and track coach Al Garrido said.

High-wind advisories are in effect through Wednesday evening. Military forecasts call for winds as high as 75 mph raking Yokosuka this evening, Wind gusts as high as 58 mph have been felt at Naval Air Facility Atsugi and 42-mph gusts at Yokota.

Some 300 flights were canceled, stranding thousands of passengers, and winds of 56 mph were forecast to rake Tokyo into the evening.

Locally, DODDS schools canceled spring sports practices and sent activities buses home early. Kanto Plain baseball doubleheaders pitting Kinnick at St. Mary's International and Zama American at Yokota were postponed; no makeup dates were announced.

As always where storms are concerned, if you've not done so, please take precautions around the home. Tie down or bring loose objects inside. Move automobiles into open areas away from threes.

 
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About the Author


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.