on_wx Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 A tornado tore through a city northeast of Japan's capital on Sunday, killing one person, injuring dozens of others and destroying scores of houses. Full article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/05/06/tornado-japan.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derecho! Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 EF rating for this would be a challenge because from my understanding, Japanese walls aren't necessarily that strongly built, but they have these incredibly heavy tile roofs. Definitely different construction modes than the US, though. Any video or radar loops? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wxmeddler Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckeye05 Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 This specific video is incredible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja_ZaAufjlE&feature=related Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellinwood Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 EF rating for this would be a challenge because from my understanding, Japanese walls aren't necessarily that strongly built, but they have these incredibly heavy tile roofs. Definitely different construction modes than the US, though. Any video or radar loops? They have typhoons and frequent earthquakes... I'm sure they have a comparable building code. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
downeastnc Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 Damage path hard to say how they rate them or what it would have got here that second video looked pretty decent lots of vertical motion, looks mostly EF 1-2 maybe some EF3 depending on building code. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESX_owN1Jzg&feature=related Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckeye05 Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 I'd say low end EF3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mclean02 Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 where can i find a radar loop? how good are the japanese radars are they nexrad spec ?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallow Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 すご~い！ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 I don't know if it hit mostly industrial areas, but considering how densely populated Japan is..that seems like a good thing only one person was killed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Looking at Japanese news media, it looks like they're worried there could be more tornadoes in the coming days, as with unusually cold air in the upper atmosphere, strong southerly surface winds, and a higher sun in the sky, this sort of thing could happen more. They're warning people that if they start seeing dark cumulonimbus clouds, then they should seek sturdy shelter because of the threat of tornadoes. I see too that there have been tornado watches issued off and on over the past few days across the country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 There was also a story in Ibaraki Prefecture about the Oozeki family, composed of a man named Hideya, his wife Mariko, and a boy (whose name I don't remember!), that had a dog chained to a doghouse; both the dog--named Wan-Tarou*--and the doghouse were apparently sucked up by the tornado and the dog was thought to be gone; the boy was crying, worried he would never see his dog again. But on Tuesday, Mariko spotted the dog about 100 metres from the house and the dog was OK! The boy was very happy to get his dog back! *Wan comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia for dog barking and Tarou is a standard boy's name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Looking at media, it was a 14-year old boy who died. His name was Yoshiyuki Suzuki, lived in Tsukuba City in Ibaraki Prefecture, and was a third-grade middle school student (roughly equivalent to ninth grade here in the U.S.). He died in his own house. That is tragic. The tornado looks like it had winds of at least 60 m/s, which would place it in the F2 class. Japan uses the Fujita Scale like we do, but not the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derecho! Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 They have typhoons and frequent earthquakes... I'm sure they have a comparable building code. One of the reasons 6,000 people were killed in the Kobe earthquake were the heavy tile roofs of private residences - walls couldn't hold them up. A standard US wooden stick-built house would have fared much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted May 9, 2012 Author Share Posted May 9, 2012 Looking at Japanese news media, it looks like they're worried there could be more tornadoes in the coming days, as with unusually cold air in the upper atmosphere, strong southerly surface winds, and a higher sun in the sky, this sort of thing could happen more. They're warning people that if they start seeing dark cumulonimbus clouds, then they should seek sturdy shelter because of the threat of tornadoes. I see too that there have been tornado watches issued off and on over the past few days across the country. Do you know if the JMA issues tornado warnings, too? I remember a couple of years ago there was a 1/2-1 mile wide tornado somewhere in central Japan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Do you know if the JMA issues tornado warnings, too? I remember a couple of years ago there was a 1/2-1 mile wide tornado somewhere in central Japan. I saw it being issued once when I was searching for tornado videos on Nico Douga, which is a Japanese video site. It was while the person was watching TV and the warning popped up. It said 竜巻警報 tatsumaki keihou, meaning "tornado warning." I couldn't find it mentioned as an official product on the JMA site anywhere, though. On TV Japan, I just watched a 30-minute NHK documentary on the tornado called "Today's Close Up." They showed a radar animation of the storm that produced the tornado, a classic supercell with the flying eagle and a well-defined hook. They noted how this type of storm was rare in Japan, but common in America. They showed the 14-year old victim's house, which had been turned upside down, literally. The concrete foundation had toppled over with the house and was now facing up away from the ground. The question came up about how it was that the tornado could have done this, when it wasn't much stronger than some typhoons, which would never have done that. It was explained that with a typhoon you just have the horizontal motion, which the house can withstand, but with a tornado you have not just the horizontal motion, but also a very strong vertical motion that helps the horizontal winds topple the house. Before watching this, I had not understood that about vertical motion The man they interviewed was Fumi'aki Kobayashi, a meteorologist who specializes in the study of tornadoes, and he surveyed the damage and did a really good job of explaining how supercells form, how tornadoes form, and what goes on inside them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyhb Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 "Tatsumaki" was one of the first ways I learned how to say "tornado" in a different language. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 BTW, the radar animation toward the end, as it was moving through the urban areas, showed a debris ball. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 On TV Japan, I just watched a 30-minute NHK documentary on the tornado called "Today's Close Up." Argh! I try to catch that show every week, and here I went and missed the one about the tornado. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Argh! I try to catch that show every week, and here I went and missed the one about the tornado. I DVR'd it. I wonder if there's some way to send you a copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 New video: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 I DVR'd it. I wonder if there's some way to send you a copy. How big is it? I wonder if it could be uploaded somewhere? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mclean02 Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 that would be cool to see that darn i hate that i messed it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plokoon111 Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 Ruuun!!! ITs Tornzilla! Okay, the video footage is interesting. I'm sure the buildings down there are built pretty well due to earthquake, and other disasters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 How big is it? I wonder if it could be uploaded somewhere? Well, it's in Japanese, but here's the page about that episode: http://www.nhk.or.jp/gendai/kiroku/detail_3193.html I can't play the streaming video right now, so I can't tell you if it would have it, but you can see a snapshot from the really close-up tornado video that I couldn't find on YouTube on that page. That was quite a video, with the tornado so close; you can hear the freight train sound very clearly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 13, 2012 Share Posted May 13, 2012 Well, it's in Japanese, but here's the page about that episode: http://www.nhk.or.jp...etail_3193.html I can't play the streaming video right now, so I can't tell you if it would have it, but you can see a snapshot from the really close-up tornado video that I couldn't find on YouTube on that page. That was quite a video, with the tornado so close; you can hear the freight train sound very clearly! The really impressive video I couldn't find on YouTube starts at about 5:45 on the streaming media, which is from a clip of that episode, available on that page. I did not see the radar animation, however, on the streaming media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrick05 Posted May 14, 2012 Share Posted May 14, 2012 apparently, here's a series of radar images that day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beneficii Posted May 14, 2012 Share Posted May 14, 2012 apparently, here's a series of radar images that day Ja, the resolution, though, isn't as good as the one I saw on Today's Close Up. On the one I saw, you can clearly see the hook throughout the whole time and you can even see a debris ball toward the end. I really hope to find a way to upload that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted May 14, 2012 Share Posted May 14, 2012 I really hope to find a way to upload that. YouTube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mclean02 Posted May 14, 2012 Share Posted May 14, 2012 thanks patrick05 really interesting stuff for sure !! thanks yeah let me know where i can watch that gotta look for it when i get home today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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