This season’s typhoon #14, “Nanmadol” has cleared Japan yesterday. It wreaked havoc as it crossed first through Kyushu from south to northwest and then when it returned from the west through northern Honshu. At the latitude of Kyoto city, it was far enough out on the Japan sea to only cause a bit of rain in the night to Tuesday. Looking at all the damage it has done in the rest of Japan, we were very lucky.
It could have been much worse. In August, we had a number of very heavy rainstorms. One of them caused more than 90 mm of rain in a single hour in northern Kyoto city, and at some point people there were even asked to evacuate. Note that Kyoto’s Kita-ku district reaches far into the countryside, so I’m not sure where exactly that was.
Given that I live fairly far uphill now, my area isn’t prone to flooding, at least according to the local hazard map I received when buying the house. However, during those rainstorms, the little stream at the back of my house swelled to a raging torrent, and what is usually not more than 10 cm of clear brook turned into a brown soup that filled half of the bed provided for it.
It took several days for the waters to recede, and the loud noise coming from the otherwise so quiet stream surprised me quite a bit. At that time, I finally understood why the agent mentioned it several times at the time of the sale.
But now, the only consequence of the typhoon is that the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees over night. Although we still have 23 degrees during the day, and the temperatures should rise again soon, it feels pretty cold right now. So much so, that last night, for the first time since this spring, Pumpkin wanted to sleep under my blanket. I guess we’re officially in autumn now.