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JMA RADAR FRIDAY AFTERNOON
The ingredients are coming together across Japan for a messy stew of rain, thunderstorms and strong winds for this weekend.
Tropical Storm Kong-Rey is still stirring up the seas in the East China Sea and actually we are still seeing showers along Taiwan’s West Coast with the risk of another 150mm of rainfall. This follows numerous reports of rainfall in the past 48hrs over 700mm with one report in Chunri up to 843mm. This triggered some serious flooding for the area and has resulted in the loss of three lives across Taiwan.
But now the threat area is switching north in to western and Northern Japan along the sea of Japan coastline.
Already on radar we are seeing these showers streaming shower in to western Kyushu. A few areas have seen over 150mm so far on Friday and that number could easily double going in to Saturday leading to a serious risk of flooding. This is all due to the combination of a cold front which triggered severe weather across China and Korea leading to flooding in southern Korea along with the instability being brought in by Kong-rey.
A few storms will also produce short time heavy rainfall up to 80mm per hour along the sea of Japan coastline. 74mm per hour already recorded in Ishikawa today. Due to these intense rains the JMA has also issued warnings for landslides in Toyama Prefecture, Ishikawa Prefecture, Nagasaki Prefecture, and Saga Prefecture.
Okinawa will see partly cloudy skies with southerly winds and a chance of a occasional thunderstorms.
On the Pacific coast of Japan a slightly different story is being told. Persistant strong southerly winds gusting up and over Tropical
Flooding in Southern Taiwan
Storm strength at times is surging in warm air out of the tropics leading to hot temperatures across the Pacific Coast of Japan including Tokyo. The high in Tokyo on Saturday is expected to be around 36 degrees. This heat combined with southerly moisture will still bring the risk of isolated thunderstorms developing across the Kanto area through Saturday.
Meanwhile farther west in to North Eastern China it is dropping in to the 20s with temperatures through the overnight hours expected to produce frost.
These near freezing lows are not expected to push in to Japan but the highs will become more bearable in to the mid 20s by next week.
The rest of the tropics continues to contend with the south west monsoon today surging in moisture across Thailand through the Philippines. Isolated afternoon thunderstorms are still a threat here but the duration of the rainfall is night and day from last weekend when heavy showers were swamping the Manila Metro area. Now partly cloudy skies for Manila are in the forecast with temperatures in the low 30s.
Even though rain may not be falling though Gale warnings are in effect across Northern Luzon for 60kt winds and 4m high waves.
Looking Ahead, Taiwan may not be out of the woods yet. A new low pressure area spawning in the wake of Kong-rey is being picked up by a few global models and is expected to develop by Sunday in to Monday. Vertical wind shear will still be somewhat high in the area and even though the intensity of this new low remains weak according to the models it still could spark heavy rainfall across south eastern China and Taiwan.