'Fitow' Looms

The wind is beginning to rattle the shutters of my study, and I see from the JMA forecast page that we can expect our first typhoon of the autumn here this evening. The latest 'plot' suggests that tropical cyclone 0709 'Fitow' is already over the Gulf of Sagami and will head straight up Tokyo Bay towards leafy Chiba-ken. You can see its progress here

It's the season. Most of the stronger typhoons arrive here at the end of the summer, and with the hot weather we've had this year we can expect some powerful ones. Our neighbourhood is on the lee side of a forested hill so we are usually quite sheltered here. Touch wood. As someone accustomed to Atlantic winter storms it always suprises me how quickly they can move in and move out again. By the 'early hours' this storm is expected to have moved well up into northern Honshu.

This house shakes something awful in a typhoon - the shutters rattle and the timber walls are shaken by the force of the gusts and you can't tell whether it is a typhoon or an earthquake - or both!

I've lived in some windy places in my life. Long ago we used to live in Orkney, one of the more exposed of island groups off the north coast of Scotland. That was a place where it was definitely worth staying indoors on stormy nights. Not that I did. A really good 'blow' was enough to get me down to the shore to admire the mountainous seas rolling in any time.

Maybe I'll go down to Kujukuri to take a look at the sea later. But anyway, the cats are 'grounded' until further notice. It is a night in watching television for them eh?