A monster typhoon has been swirling in the Northwest Pacific Ocean for over a week. On Sunday, it became the strongest storm on Earth so far this year, with 160-mph winds.
It seems inevitable, given the projections, that this storm will track over Japan’s southern prefectures of Okinawa and Kagoshima as a very strong typhoon. On Wednesday morning, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center predicted it would be near northern Okinawa on Saturday evening, Eastern Time, as the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane.
“Japan has already endured several spates of extreme weather this summer,” the AP reports, “with heavy rains triggering deadly landslides on Kyushu in June that killed 37 people and left six missing. Torrential rains in northern Japan flooded parts of northern Honshu island in late July.”
Astronauts on the International Space Station fly over the Pacific Ocean several times per week. Every summer, they have the opportunity to see incredible storms like Typhoon Noru.