Weather

Heavy rain lashed Japan's main island of Honshu on Tuesday, disrupting rush-hour transport and prompting one city to advise residents to evacuate. The western city of Wakayama was deluged by 55.5 millimeters of rain per hour during the early morning — a record for May — while central Tokyo and...

To allow people to better prepare for upcoming weather, the Meteorological Agency will next month begin offering temperature forecasts for 12 days instead of the current seven. The forecasts will be published on the agency's official website every day at around 2:30 p.m. starting June 19. The ...

Heavy rain continued to lash Kyushu on Monday after stranding more than 300 people on a mountain on Yakushima island over the weekend. The Meteorological Agency warned torrential rain may cause landslides and floods, and issued a caution on the threat of tornadoes and lightning strikes across ...

At least 314 people stranded by heavy rains — many of them overnight — managed to descend a mountain on Yakushima Island, Kagoshima Prefecture with the help of rescuers from the Japan Coast Guard, the Ground Self-Defense Forces and others on Sunday. Hikers in more than 10 cars and buses were f...

A sightseeing route that includes massive walls of snow running through the Tateyama mountain range in central Japan opened Monday for this year's tourist season. The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, which is closed for most of the winter, connects the town of Tateyama, in Toyama Prefecture, with...

The Meteorological Agency's research arm recently began developing an artificial intelligence-based system to predict high-wind events severe enough to impact the safety of land and air transportation, officials said. The system, which the Meteorological Research Institute aims to develop over...

100 YEARS AGO Friday, March 21 1919 Tokyo buildings damaged by rare gale THE JAPAN TIMES By the violent wind Wednesday evening, two large, two-storied buildings at the Tokyo Medical College at Higashi-Okubo that were being erected, and one of them almost completed, were blown down and de...

A group in a small Fukushima Prefecture town is doing its best to rebrand a tiresome winter chore into a fun and healthy outdoor activity. In the town of Nishiaizu, where about half of the 6,000 residents are 65 or older, snow shoveling is being promoted as an enjoyable way for young people to...

With an eye on the Tokyo Games, Japanese researchers are developing a new system to accurately forecast torrential downpours — known in Japan as "guerrilla rainstorms" — 30 minutes before they strike. Scientists have created a high-tech radar capable of producing a three-dimensional map of a r...

The annual Sapporo Snow Festival, one of the nation's largest winter events, attracted a record-high 2.74 million visitors thanks to good weather and an influx of Chinese vacationers during the Lunar New Year period, organizers said Tuesday. The event, held since 1950, was staged from late las...