Typhoon to make landfall in flood-ravaged Japan on Saturday

11:07, 27 July 2018

TOKYO. KAZINFORM Typhoon Jongdari, packing winds of nearly 200 kilometers per hour, is expected to make landfall in Japan on Saturday, buffeting a country that has already been ravaged by massive flooding and extreme heat.

The season's 12th typhoon is likely to hit Japan's main island of Honshu on Saturday night while maintaining its current powerful force, the weather agency said Friday, KYODO NEWS reports.

The approach of Jongdari follows torrential rains that devastated wide areas in western Japan in early July, killing 224 people and wrecking tens of thousands of houses through landslides and flooding.

The rain disaster was immediately followed by weeks of extreme heat, logging the country's highest-ever temperature of 41.1 C on Monday and claiming dozens of lives of mostly elderly people with heatstroke, prompting the Japan Meteorological Agency to declare the heat wave a "natural disaster."

As of 10 a.m. Friday, Typhoon Jongdari was traveling northeast in the Pacific around 210 km south of Chichijima Island with an atmospheric pressure of 965 hectopascals at its center and winds of up to 198 kph.

The agency warned of strong gusts on the Pacific coast of Honshu on Saturday.

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