Typhoon Chaba hits Japan’s southern islands

More than 800 residents fled their homes and thousands of households suffered power outages after the season’s 18th typhoon pounded the Okinawa main island region on Tuesday.

Incredible footage shared by Dillion Feinauer showed pink sky over Okinawa before the storm hit. He was filming from Marine Corps base Camp Foster.

The eye of the category-four storm was over the East China Sea at 10am local time, with winds up to 198km/h and gusts of 270km/h, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The storm is projected to hit either the southern part of the Korean Peninsula or the northern part of Japan’s Kyushu island on Wednesday morning.

Weather.com reports that by early Thursday morning, Chaba’s circulation centre will move over northern/central mainland Japan as a tropical storm before heading out to sea.

AccuWeather reported Chaba reached “super-typhoon status, strengthening to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane”, on Monday afternoon local time.

While the typhoon has weakened, weather experts warned residents of Japan and South Korea to remain vigilant.

Typhoon Lionrock hit northeastern Japan in late August, leaving more than 20 people dead. It was the first typhoon to make landfall in the northeast since the agency started compiling comparable data in 1951.

Originally published as Sky turned pink before typhoon hit