Honshu at 7:16 pm EDT Sunday, October 5, 2014 was hit by Typhoon Phanfone.

October 7, 2014

Super Typhoon Vongfong, (click here) currently tracking towards Japan, is being called the most powerful storm on earth this year. It underwent rapid intensification last night and is now packing maximum sustained winds of 155 mph. The storm comes just after the deadly Typhoon Phanfone made landfall in Japan earlier this week.

Vongfong is forecast to take a similar path to that of Phanfone. Although it may strengthen a bit over the next 24 hours, the long-term track shows it weakening while moving North. Officials in Japan will be monitoring the typhoon closely over the next few days. Heavy rain, strong winds and mudslides are possible as this storm tracks closer to the island.

This will be the second storm to hit Japan in one week. Sediment plumes, like the ones that appears below  are good markers for estimating the amount of water leaving the land.

...Phanfone (click here) dumped 48 centimeters (19 inches) of rain in the mountainous region of Shizuoka Prefecture. At one point during the storm, rain fell in Shizuoka—the capital city of the prefecture—at a record-rate of 8.7 centimeters (3.4 inches) per hour. The 667,000 people living in the prefecture were urged to evacuate to safer ground.

The intense rain and resulting runoff led to sediment plumes in Suruga Bay, visible in the natural-color image (top) acquired October 6, 2014, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite. Such plumes were not apparent on September 29 (bottom image).

Phanfone later turned northeast and headed for Tokyo, bringing torrential rain and strong winds to the city before moving out to sea....

US Naval vessels should be in port for this storm. I don't care if this is a low category typhoon or the captain thinks the ship can weather this storm at sea better than in port. That was proven differently.