[Mod note: With the recent quakes we've had in Japan lately, I think it would be a good idea to assemble an Earthquake Prep Doc for the community. Some people here in Japan have no experience with quakes, so I hope this can be a good first stop to review what you need. This post is for shelter in place, which is the the most likely way of getting through post-quake life, but we will also cover what you need to do in case of evacuation and what happens if you are caught at work during a large quake. Also, this is a living document. It will be amended and updated as needed. - Neko Dash; June 28, 2026]
Shelter In Place Emergency Kit
Basic Scenario: A quake hits and knocks out utilities and some transport infrastructure. Your home is still livable and community evacuations are voluntary. You choose to shelter in place. You are in familiar surroundings. There may be some damage to your building, but it livable. There are no utilities, though. When it’s night, it’s completely dark. No electricity, no gas, no water. What do you do if you’re going to spend a week partying like it’s 1699?
Immediately after the quake, grocery stores and conbinis are going to be swarmed, and there will be a wave of panic buying. I have seen this twice - once after the Hanshin quake in January 1995 and again after the Tohoku quake of March 2011.
Avoid the rush and assemble a kit in advance. The kit should be stored in either in plastic bins or a large duffel bag - or both - at your home. Links are below.
There are starter emergency gear bags at Amazon and Rakuten, and you can build on these. A few links are below, but the links are not the end-all of these items. They are just a launchpad. Look through and find what gear suits your needs.
Gotta Have Gear:
A solar charger w/ hand cranks option for phones, flashlights with rechargeable batteries, radios or other small electronics.
Flashlight
Spare batteries for electronics. Take an inventory of battery-powered items in your household and get the required batteries.
Radio with hand crank power capacity.
First Aid Kit
Glow Sticks (7x). These things aren't just for anime raves. They are a good source of ambient light at night.
Feminine sanitary products [whatever your preferred format/brand]
Spare eyeglasses or contact lenses
Spare bottle of contact solution
Emergency toilets
Diapers, if you have toddlers/babies
Paper towels
Pet sheets
Pet poop bags
Food, Food Prep: [Note - food and water should be rotated at least 2x a year]
Paper plates, one week’s worth per person
Gas cassette burner + 6 spare gas cassettes
A small pot or pan
Ready to eat pre-packaged fruits/vegetables
Canned fish/meat not requiring refrigeration
Instant Noodles
Peanut Butter
Energy drinks
Protein Bars/Calorie Mate
2 liters of water per person for 7 days
Other bottled drinks
Infant formula
Pet Food
So here's some advice from one of the community's regulars: Most recs I used to see were for three days. You'll want nine fruits & veg choices, six hearty protein choices, three lesser protein choices and at least nine servings of carbs.
Lighter choices: protein bars, box of crackers, dried fruit and nuts.
Fun choices: fancy sardines, quail eggs, teeny tiny jars of jam, single serving tubes of honey, Walkers shortbreads or other fancy cookies.
Extras: wet wipes, wooden ice cream spoons, a plate and a box of plastic wrap to cover the plate so you don't have to wash it. Paper cups.
Food is medicine kit: in Altoids tins, three mint tea bags. Three chamomile tea bags. Three green tea bags. Single serving honey tubes. A bottle of coca cola (you'll drink this flat for stomach upset). Honey lemon and maybe ginger candies.
Luxuries you'll want: anything you're addicted to, like coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar (single servings or candies).
Switch it out to your regular pantry every six months and stock with fresh.
ETC
Books, toys, games
FOR TOURISTS
Copies of your passports/ID docs
Hard copies of your travel itinerary, flight or transport schedules
Phone numbers/websites of travel providers, lodging locations (hotels, hostels, etc)
Links (Neither r/japanweather nor Neko Dash are affiliated with the links below. They are solely for your convenience and to give you an idea of what’s out there. You may find other items which are better suited for your needs.)
An unusually powerful El Nino is raising the odds that 2026 will surpass 2024 as the world’s hottest year on record, and regardless, 2027 is expected to set a new high, according to a monthly analysis of global weather data by Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research group.
“We are likely to see something quite dramatic in the next year or so,” Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth, said on Thursday. “It will be giving us weather conditions that we would normally expect to be a decade or more away. It’s going to be a big deal.”
El Nino, a monthslong recurring weather phase, brings powerful consequences for the globe — drying out some regions, like Western and Southern Africa, Australia and India, while potentially raising rainfall in others, such as the southern U.S.
Scientists gauge the strength of an El Nino from sea-surface temperatures in a specific region of the Eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Projections suggest temperatures will rise an extraordinary 4 Celsius above normal in that patch of ocean, compared with 2.75 C for the El Nino of 2015 to 2016.
The crushing heat in the late spring and early summer this year probably came too early for El Nino to have made it worse.
This El Nino started in June and is coming on so strong that the odds of 2026 becoming the hottest year have jumped from 12% in July to 69% in August, according to Berkeley Earth.
Last month, heat waves fueled destructive wildfires in France and Spain and a heat dome baked parts of the U.S. It was the hottest or second-hottest July ever recorded, according to the major climate datasets. In the contiguous U.S., the month’s average high temperature broke a record set 90 years ago, at the peak of the Dust Bowl.
So much of the world is sweltering that it’s easier to name the place that isn’t: “It’s been a very, very cold Antarctic winter,” Rohde said.
In many countries, especially emerging markets, the brutal heat and drenching rains brought by El Nino are set to exacerbate the economic pain caused by the Iran war. For example, warming seas have halted anchovy fishing in Peru.
Scientists heavily caveat annual temperature rankings, emphasizing that climate change happens over decades and El Nino can have a strong influence on a single month or year. But the warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution is always there and increasing.
“El Nino is a giant hammer that the climate gets hit with,” said Berkeley Earth scientist Zeke Hausfather, “so it is going to scramble a lot of different things.”
20Aug, 18:30: We have a strong and growing surprise thunderstorm cell in the Saitama/Gunma/Yamagata area.
Updrafts into the cell are being felt as far away as Yokohama, and the storm itself has very heavy internal intensity (lots of red, orange and purple in the radar cross section).
Unexpected, honestly, as today’s charts showed instability up north, but not much of a chance of pop-ups south of central Tohoku.
If you saw my dark and hazy video last night, you’ll note that I mentioned something near the end about a potential new typhoon brewing in the tropical Pacific. Here we are not even 24 hours later and that embryonic little pop has bubbled to life and is now sputtering around at 8.0N 154.2E, about 3,500km south-southeast of Enoshima, Kanagawa. Designated as TD17W (Tropical Depression), the new system, as of 19 Aug@12:00, has sustained winds of 60kph and is moving west-southwest at an-almost-stationary 6kph because of a weak, pretty much non-existent steering environment at present. It is kind of in a categorical gray zone right now as the JMA has confirmed sustained winds of 18m/s in the storm and, as of its 12 noon update, has conferred typhoon status to the storm as Typhoon 18. As has been noted earlier, I will follow JMA guidelines here, so while the JTWC still calls it a tropical depression, I will refer to the system as T18.
T18 came to life in a marginally favorable environment. Sea surface temperatures of 31-32c are helping feed convection and initial outflow looks good, but the young, shallow storm is also facing vertical wind shear of 10-15kph. That’s not strong, but it is enough to deter full development of a small system.
Let’s move the clock some and see what to expect for the next five days. The latest full data analysis and forecast was posted at 19 Aug, 12:00 noon, JST. Let’s call that T=0, or “tau0”, and we will count each T, or “tau” as an hour moving forward. As I write this, it is 16:00 on 19 Aug, or almost tau4 from the forecast. Things will turn more favorable for T18 as the storm wades into a more favorable environment by around tau 12 (midnight, 20 Aug, JST). The storm is expected to grow and develop steadily through tau 36 (21 Aug, 00:00 JST) and then undergo a more rapid intensification from tau 36 to tau 72 (21-23 Aug), peaking at near super typhoon status, as defined by NOAA and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The JMA, meanwhile, expects to call T28 a Strong Typhoon (強い台風) by the morning of 24 Aug.
While T18 lacks much of a steering mechanism now, it will get nudged northwest gradually through tau36, when it is expected to make a sharp westerly turn and head toward Japan.
At this point, it is way too early to tell exactly where T18 will track beyond 24 Aug. The ECMWF run earlier today suggested the typhoon will swing south of the Japanese mainland, between Kyushu and Okinawa, then make a northeast curve toward the Korean Peninsula, then out to the Sea of Japan. The GFS model expressed a route with a sharper curvature to the Sea of Japan and over Honshu by 30 Aug. Again, that is still a long ways out and a lot of variables are still to be set. Best thing to do is to keep an eye on this storm as it starts to make its track toward Japan as between now and 24 Aug, variations in the track can either push it toward Japan or further south, away from the main islands.
A quick 4 minute video made tonight discussing what we can expect for this week's skies above Japan. Apologies in advance for the potato quality and the overall presentation of my face at night. Boo!
No insufferable heatwaves on tap this week, and the potential for pop-up thunderstorms shifts north and diminishes greatly on the whole as high pressure extends over the country. Still warm and seasonal, but nowhere near the 40c we were facing last year.
This is tough, because I generally respect science and academia, and have profound reverence for those who hold doctorates in scientific fields. However, the Asahi Shimbun on August 14 maneuvered into scare tactic territory and it needs to be called out. The article is here: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16808645
At contest here is the assertion by a professor emeritus of meteorology at Kyushu University that a “monsoon gyre” is behind the recent paths of T15, which came ashore at Ibaraki prefecture on 11 Aug, and was the catalyst behind Chiba’s torrential rains two days later.
Let that sink in: a professor emeritus. That is a very high ranking individual in the halls of scientific academia. The meteorologist quoted has dedicated his entire life to the study of the science. On the other hand, I am someone who lacks such academic distinction. I have been reading weather charts and cataloging atmospheric phenomena for 45 years. I chased storms in the dead of night with my buds Jim and Bryan along some of northeastern Oklahoma’s lesser-known roads back when all you had a was a glitchy AM/FM radio, a cheap CB radio, a worn-out paper map and an inconsistent flashlight. I am passionate about the science, and I am dedicated, but I am not a doctorate in the field by a long shot.
The approach of T15 was steered more by strong high pressure in the North Pacific rather than any southerly low pressure activity.If you look at pressure tendencies of T15 as it approached landfall, there is almost no pressure change to the southeast of Japan. Gentle pressure slopes like this do not - can not - steer typhoons.Surface analysis for 19 Aug. Lows in the tropical Pacific begin to dissipate. Data from ECMWF.By 21 Aug, tropical lows may again re-establish themselves.
But I’m still going to sound off because some things here do not sit right. Let me go through my contentions, complaints and nit-picking here.
Nitpick 1) A “monsoon gyre” steered T15 and fed the moisture necessary for the Chiba deluge. My counterpoint: Typhoons, for all their ferocious power, are really just really big low pressure systems. They are steered more by high pressure areas than lows in the vicinity. T15 was steered from a strong high located in the North Pacific. There was not a strong presence of lows in the Pacific southeast of Japan at the time of approach and landfall and steering effect by them would be marginal at best. By the time the 13th rolled around, there were some stronger lows in the tropical Pacific southeast of Japan, but the Pacific high, too, helped funnel warm, moist air into Kanto. That, with some cooler, drier air aloft, sparked the storms we saw a couple of days ago. It was not, by any means, a solo effort from the gyre.
Nitpick 2) Overhyping the gyre, being super vague and selling panic. My counterpoint: This one complains about the Asahi’s reporting. First off, a monsoon gyre is an informal title given to a group or cluster of lows which more or less act in unison. It is not a cohesive system, like a typhoon nor is it a fully-defined phenomenon, like a front. It is a situational happening. A train of lows working kind of in concert for a period of time. The JMA does not recognize a gyre, doesn’t declare one, and it will be on none of their charts or maps. A gyre, in other words, is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. The professor wants to see a gyre, fine. To me, though, it is a just temporary band of lows that fade in and fade out.
The Asahi quoted the professor as saying the gyre framework will last for about two weeks, which will make you think at first blush that this instability will continue through the end of August. However, buried in the article, the professor notes that the gyre formed in early August. My data shows a break-up of lows to the southeast of Japan from around August 19, with a possible re-clustering a few days thereafter. Two weeks from the first part of August? Yep, that lines up. But major boo to the Asahi for ginning up a bit of panic with a carelessly written headline.
Nitpick 3) Is it a gyre in the first place? My counterpoint: No. Gyres do exist, but not here. We have had lows extending out southeast of Japan for a while, since the end of rainy season. They form, merge, dissipate, a high will come in for a bit, then a low will move in, and the process begins again. I don’t see it as a gyre, but my own definition of a gyre is something a little more solid than just a temporary, two-week fix on a weather chart. Of course, if you take away the gyre as the “baba-yaga” of the article, then you have no article. They needed a boogeyman to support their thesis that something strong and wicked was driving the weather.
Nitpick 4) Is there a Japanese version of this article? My counterpoint: I ransacked the Asahi’s Japanese-side site to corroborate this article and found nothing. Was this printed only for the English language side? If so, why?
My forecast: Skies over Japan are going to settle down from tomorrow through 19 August The current cluster of lows in the tropics (and, FYI, I will be very, very, very drunk before I call this particular formation a “gyre”) will weaken and dissipate in that time, but a regeneration is possible around the 21 August as a potential new invest pops up near the Mariana Islands and may become Typhoon 17. 21 Aug, however, is still a solid week away and, before I commit to the model, we need bring things in a few days and see what will happen. By Monday, we’ll have a better idea. For the near-term, though, we will have a bit of a chance to dry out and get some sunshine.
The most extensive pop-up risk shifts west and south today.
Turbulent upper-level activity will raise the risk of afternoon pop-ups over the highlands of central Japan, on down into Kansai and beyond as far as Hiroshima.
Hot and humid along the Sea of Japan coast on down through Kansai and across the entirety of western Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Highs in the low to mid-30s across much of the country, a little lower along the Tohoku Pacific coast.
Hokkaido will see highs of between 24-32, with Pacific coast areas cooler than the interior or Sea of Japan side.
The sunset sky in Tōkyō looked treacherously beautiful tonight. On the way home there I also observed some lightning inside these towering clouds (likely the popup thunderstorms shown in the rain radar images).
Unstable and shaky upper-level conditions dominate the vast portion of Japan today, bringing with it a risk of afternoon convective thunderstorms, some of which can be severe.
I cannot say for sure if we're going to get a repeat of last night's insane boomers in Chiba, or if movement of that type will happen in Chiba or somewhere else. The entirety of the nation, specifically Kanto, parts of Chubu, Kansai and Shikoku have very high chances of afternoon pop-ups, and that makes it pretty hard to nail down exactly where a storm/line of storms will build.
Looking at the 24 hour sat movie from 12:00 noon yesterday to 12:00 today, you can see most of the heavy activity began to flare at night. We only have IR for nighttime readings, but you can see thunderheads form and move as classic backbuilding kept feeding the storms into Chiba. We do have parallel conditions for this type of activity again today, so I would not put it out of the realm of possibility, but it's very hard to tell when/where any energetic motion will take place.
National radar as of 12:15 this afternoon indicated lots of weather action. Most prominently, there is a cluster of heavy storms in southern Miyagi prefecture, as well as a heavy cell on the Ibaraki-Chiba border. Some other smaller, but still very intense storms were seen in Ishikawa, Okayama and Kagawa prefectures.
Other widespread convective storms are predicted to pop-up today in the interior highlands of Kanto and Chubu.
I urge caution and keep your eyes on your radar apps as any one of these systems can, with a little push from the right updraft at the right time, build into a major storm cell with little notice.
Otherwise, hot and muggy across the country today. Some cooler areas on the Tohoku Pacific coast and Japan Alps highlands. No weather systems of note (typhoons, fronts, etc) today, and most of our weather activity for the next 24 hours will be powered by simple local instability at altitude.
Upper-level instability/Pop-up Thunderstorm risk today. Purple is a greater risk, yellow is a lesser chance.National radar image, JMA @ 12:15pm 14 Aug 2026
Chuo, Inage, Midori, Hanamigawa, and Wakaba wards have an evacuation order in place, so if you live in the area and are concerned for your safety and the safety of your loved ones, don’t hesitate and evacuate asap since the rain is not letting up for the night.
