In addition to engulfing
the island with winds of up to 215 kilometers per hour (134 mph), it is
also on course to hit China and the Korean peninsula.
As of Sunday afternoon local time, Bolaven was about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Okinawa and was moving northwest at 17 kph. It is expected to make landfall in a few hours.
Storm chaser James
Reynolds, who was waiting out the storm on the northwestern coast of
Okinawa, said conditions on the outskirts of the typhoon are fierce
enough to uproot trees.
"There's no one on the
streets in the town which I'm in," Reynolds said. "This is only going to
get worse over the next five, six, seven hours, because the storm
itself is quite a way offshore."
Storm surges are expected
to be a major problem for the Okinawa area. Highways on low-lying
barrier islands could be completely washed out, with surges at the coast
expected at about 8 meters (26 feet) high.
More than 400,000 people in the area live in elevations between zero and 50 meters.
Typhoon Bolaven also
dwarfs Okinawa in size. The storm's cloud field is about 2,000
kilometers wide, or about 20 times the length of the island.
But the infrastructure on Okinawa is designed to withstand violent storms.
"Utility poles are so
wide you couldn't even put your arms around them," Reynolds said. "All
the houses are built with concrete. There's no such thing as a beach
house in Okinawa because it would just get destroyed by a typhoon."
After slamming into Okinawa, the typhoon is forecast to hit the Korean peninsula Tuesday.
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