The tropical storm that raged through Japan damaged the space center on Tanegashima island.
Typhoon Nanmadol stormed through Japan over the weekend and moved into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, after taking the lives of four people, injuring dozens, starting landslides, and dumping up to two feet of rain in just 24 hours. It also did not spare a space center on Tanegashima island.
According to ABC News, Japanese authorities were assessing damage made by Typhoon Nanmadol to a wall at a Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency's space center. The Economy and Industry Ministry said that they were examining the extent of damage Typhoon Nanmadol made to one building that was being used to build and assemble rockets.
Typhoon Nanmadol Leaves Japan and Weakens
Despite having left Japan, Typhoon Nanmadol has left destruction in its wake. According to DW, the storm made landfall in Japan's main southern island of Kyushu on Sunday night and severely injured 14 of at least 114 people who sustained other injuries.
The report also revealed that Typhoon Nanmadol had also left up to a month's worth of rain in just 24 hours, while uprooting trees and breaking windows amidst the strong winds that were recorded to rise up to 126 kph. The storm was one of the most powerful the country had ever seen, the Japan Times reported.
The report added that more than 100,000 homes were left without electricity up until Tuesday, as Kyushu Electric Power announced it was working to restore energy by the end of Wednesday. Typhoon Nanmadol also damaged a part of the Hikone Castle structures, which is considered "important cultural property."
Climate Change Implications of Typhoon Nanmadol
Scientists have attributed the strength and magnitude of Typhoon Nanmadol to climate change. According to Axios, Typhoon Nanmadol had "rapidly intensified" and reached Category 4 intensity before making landfall in Japan. Climate change is causing the unprecedented strengthening of typhoons, boosting their capacity to drop significantly more rainfall that not only causes damage to infrastructure, but also endangers human lives.
As per the DW report, Japan usually sees up to 20 storms annually, but climate change has been impacting the intensity and frequency of such storms. Typhoon Nanmadol is Japan's 14th in the storm system this year. The last huge storm occurred when Typhoon Hagibis arrived in 2019, causing more than a hundred casualties. In 2018, another storm took the lives of almost 200 people in Western Japan.
According to Live Science, up to nine million people in Japan had been ordered to evacuate because of Typhoon Nanmadol, which devoured the island nation with winds up to 234 kph. This prompted the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) to classify it as a super typhoon.
Yale Climate Connections reported that experts compared Typhoon Nanmadol to Typhoon Makurazaki, which struck Japan back in September 1945. But Typhoon Nanmadol is predicted to generate a storm surge of more than 6.6 feet in Japan's Kagoshima Bay.
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