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Typhoon Kompasu Hits Okinawa Island, May Strengthen on Path to South Korea
Typhoon Kompasu slammed Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, causing the country’s two biggest airlines to cancel flights, disrupting some shipping and closing an oil refinery owned by Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
The storm’s eye was over Nago on Okinawa island at 5.45 p.m. local time with sustained winds of 148 kilometers (90 miles) per hour, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on its website.
Kompasu is expected to strengthen into a Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale with winds of 194 kph as it leaves Okinawa and heads towards the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Center said on its website. That would make it capable of causing “devastating damage,” according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Japan’s weather agency raised warnings for gales and high waves in Okinawa and parts of Kyushu to the northeast. Advisories for heavy rain and flooding across Okinawa and Kyushu were issued. As much as 80 millimeters (3 inches) of rain per hour may fall in parts of Okinawa, the agency said.
The American military’s Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, where almost $6 billion worth of aircraft and other equipment is stationed, was placed under Typhoon Condition-1 Emergency alert for winds exceeding 93 kph, according to the base’s website, banning all outside activity.
Flights Canceled
All Nippon Airways Co. and Japan Airlines Corp., Japan’s biggest airlines, said they canceled more than 200 flights. JAL scrapped 33 flights stranding 6,860 passengers, and three of its subsidiaries called off another 89 flights. ANA canceled more than 82 flights, without saying how many customers were affected. Skymark Airlines Inc., Japan’s biggest discount carrier, said it had six cancellations.
Nansei Sekiyu K.K., a Japanese refiner majority owned by Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA, planned to halt operations of a 100,000 barrels-a-day oil refinery on Okinawa because of the typhoon, spokesman Nelson Toyomura said by phone before the typhoon hit. The company plans to restart the plant tomorrow at 1 p.m. depending on weather conditions, he said.
Marix Line, which runs services between Okinawa, Kyushu and other islands, canceled three ferries since yesterday, according to a statement on its website.
Namtheun Weakens
About 850 kilometers west of Kompasu, Tropical Storm Namtheun weakened as it travelled southeast between Taiwan and China. The storm was located 148 kilometers west of Taipei at 2 p.m. local time, the U.S. center said. Namtheun, named after a river in Laos, had sustained winds of 65 kph and was moving west-southwest at 13 kph, the center said.
Namtheun’s winds are expected to decrease to 56 kph, below tropical storm status, by tomorrow, the center said.
To the southwest of Taiwan, Tropical Storm Lionrock weakened as it meandered over the South China Sea and is no longer expected to gain typhoon status, the U.S. center said. Lionrock was 349 kilometers south of the city of Shantou in southeastern China at 2 p.m. local time, according to the typhoon center.
Lionrock has maximum sustained winds of 93 kilometers per hour and was moving northeast at 4 kph. The storm’s winds are forecast to strengthen to 111 kph by tomorrow as it approaches the south China coast near Shantou. Storms become typhoons when winds exceed 117 kph.
Typhoon-force winds may hit the southwest coast of Taiwan as the storm skirts the island, the center’s tracking map shows.
The storm may bring more heavy rain to China, where thousands of people have died in floods and mudslides as downpours inundated many parts of the country.
Lionrock, the seventh storm of the northwest Pacific season, is named after a hill in Hong Kong known for a rock formation resembling a crouching lion, according to the Hong Kong Observatory, which names storms in the northwest Pacific and South China Sea.
Kompasu, the eight storm of the season, is the Japanese name for a compass, the device used for drawing circles.
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To contact the reporters on this story: Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at asheldrick@bloomberg.net; Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net.
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