The Japanese government issued possible evacuation warnings for over 100,000 people on Sunday as Typhoon Jelawat raged across the main island of Honshu, NHK television reported.
Jelawat, the seventeenth typhoon to strike northwest Japan this season, is currently wreaking a trail of destruction across the Kinki region of western Honshu and is traveling across the northwest at around 30 miles per hour (50 km/h).
An evacuation warning has been sent to over 100,000 people due to the threat from flooding and rivers possibly bursting their banks, following huge rain squalls and high winds. A warning has been given in particular for 56,000 residents in one of Japan's largest cities, Nagoya. Another 38,000 people have been put on alert in Aiti Prefecture. In Miyagi Prefecture, still under the effects of a previous typhoon, Eviniar, 11,500 are on evacuation alert.
The national weather agency has given warnings up peak windspeeds of 115 feet (35 meters) per second. Up to 2 inches (50 mm) of rain an hour has fallen in the cities of Kobe, Nara and Osaka, along with average windspeeds of 18 miles per hour (30 km/h), causing many power lines to fall, leaving 158,000 people without electricity.
Across the country, 600 domestic and international flights have been cancelled.
The National Meteorological Service expects the storm to each the eastern regions of the island of Honshu and the capital, Tokyo by Monday morning.
