When Tropical Storm Nepartak formed 1,800 kilometers from Tokyo in the Pacific on Friday, its projected course toward the capital had some wondering if the Olympic Games were in for yet another setback.
Instead, the storm lingered just off the coast, moving north and then making history with a landfall in Miyagi Prefecture on Wednesday morning. That marked the first landfall of a tropical storm in the prefecture since records began in 1951. And according to typhoon expert Robert Speta, that wasn't the only unusual thing about Nepartak.
"Dating back to when typhoon tracking records began, there has never been a landfalling storm north of Tokyo in July," Speta said Wednesday.