It stands to reason that you shouldn’t be moving around outdoors during a typhoon. At best you’re going to get soaking wet, and potentially injury-causing flying debris are be a legitimate safety concern.
As if to serve as a reminder, the typhoon currently battering Japan decided to remind everyone to stay put by using its 255-kilometer per hour (158.8 miles per hour) winds to dramatically wreck some Okinawan drivers’ cars.
Japan gets hit by so many typhoons each year that it’s too much trouble for the country’s Meteorological Agency to name them. So while English-language news outlets have been talking about Typhoon Goni, here in Japan it’s just plain old Typhoon #15.
Don’t let the unassuming name fool you, though. While passing through Okinawa, Typhoon 15’s 255-kilomter per hour gusts were the strongest ever to be felt on Ishigakijima Island, and also the seventh-strongest ever recorded in Japan.
Just how fast is 255 kilometers per hour? Well, it’s also 71 meters per second, and if that’s still a hard mental image to wrap your brain around, it’s windy enough to do this.
No, that car in the background didn’t botch the landing after taking off from a sick ramp. Goni/15 simply rolled it over like 1:100-scale die-cast model. But still, the way it’s propped up against that planter makes it look like maybe the car could be tipped back into the proper rubbed-side down position and driven off in. This hatchback, though, isn’t going anywhere.
While the typhoon has since moved on from Ishigakijima, it’s now dropping record-setting rainfall over the southwestern island of Kyushu. Storm warnings and even evacuation notices have been issued for certain areas in its path, and residents are advised to obey the instructions of the local authorities. Staying off the roads, is, obviously, a no-brainer.After all, if the traffic signals can’t handle the weather, odds are the drivers can’t either.
Sources: Twitter/ManyarnMode via Jin, Western Pacific Weather (1, 2)