Event: Japan

Airports in China’s Zhejiang and Fujian provinces remained on high alert for potential delays and cancellations as Typhoon Saudel approached landfall on Wednesday, after multiple flights were cancelled in Taiwan and Hong Kong.Saudel, which entered the East China Sea early on Wednesday morning, led to 16 cancelled flights at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport. Affected carriers included Peach, China Airlines, EVA Air, Starlux and Thai Lion Air.Hong Kong Airlines fully cancelled its HX658/HX659 flights between the city and Japan’s Okinawa, while HK Express rescheduled its Okinawa-bound services to August 27 in response to the weather system.Saudel is the seventh typhoon to make landfall in China this year, after previous ones including Bavi brought torrential rain and floods.The National Meteorological Centre (NMC) forecasts that Saudel will make landfall between Thursday night and Friday morning along the coast from Xiangshan in eastern Zhejiang, to Fuqing in southeast Fujian province.Typhoon Narra causes flash floods in southern ChinaZhejiang province has raised its emergency response to Level 3 – the third highest of four levels – and closed all coastal scenic areas, evacuating more than 4,100 tourists from island resorts.

Widespread flooding triggered by Typhoon Narra has submerged homes and forced mass evacuations in southern China, as another storm system tracked towards Japan and Taiwan.Authorities in Chongzuo, in China’s Guangxi region – famous for its giant waterfalls and karst limestone mountains – on Tuesday evacuated more than 15,000 people after water ⁠levels surpassed a record high set in 2008.Rising flood waters have prompted China to relocate a total of 54,000 people in Guangxi, state television said.Narra made landfall as a tropical storm on Tuesday evening ⁠in China’s southern island province of Hainan after lingering over the Beibu Gulf for ‌several days, dumping heavy rain on ‌Guangxi, Hainan and Guangdong.Heavy rain is expected to persist across parts of Vietnam and southern ‌China through Wednesday, with areas of Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan and Fujian forecast to receive torrential rain, state media said.Typhoon Narra floods cities in China’s Guangxi region – videoIn Chongzuo, river water overflowed into the city, with water levels reaching the rooftops of some buildings and power lines.A notice from Chongzuo authorities on Monday ordered all businesses and tourist operations to cease and urged evacuated residents not to return to high-risk areas.Meanwhile, medium-strength Typhoon Saudel moved towards southern Japan and northern Taiwan where ‌it is expected to bring sporadic heavy rain, as Taiwan reported one dead and four missing from a separate weather system over its south and east.Japan’s weather agency warned of destructive winds and high seas as Typhoon Saudel approached the south-western islands of Okinawa prefecture.Saudel is expected to pass to the north of Taiwan starting late Thursday and into Friday, though its intensity is forecast to gradually weaken, the island’s Central Weather Administration said.A resident wearing a raincoat wades through flood water inside an inundated home in Zihguan District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Photograph: Cheng-Chia Huang/ZUMA Press Wire/ShutterstockHowever, there is…

Tracking with a GPS device has revealed that a northern boobook, an owl species, flew more than 1,800 kilometers nonstop over the sea from Japan to the Philippines, according to a study by a research team including Tohoku University.The owl species is about 30 centimeters in body length. In Japan, it lives in a wide range of places and breeds in parks in urban areas during the summer, among other locations.Although it has been found that the owl species spends winters in Southeast Asia, its migratory routes have not been known in detail.For the study, the researchers attached small GPS data loggers to four northern boobooks that lived in Sendai.An analysis last summer of data collected from one of the four showed that the male bird traveled south over the Japanese archipelago in late October 2024. It then flew 1,848 kilometers from Cape Sata, Kagoshima Prefecture, to the Philippine island of Luzon nonstop over the sea in a 36-hour trip in early November the same year.The owl later spent some four months on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan during winter before traveling some 1,500 km to the southern China island of Hainan in late March 2025. After flying north over continental China, it returned to Sendai in late April.The study “revealed a new aspect of owls running counter to people’s notion that they don’t move,” said Yawara Takeda, a Tohoku University researcher specializing in developmental biology.“If its migratory routes and resting locations are identified, that would help preserve the species,” Takeda said.The study was published in the British scientific journal Animal Biotelemetry in June.