Typhoon Trami: Has Trami hit Wakayama prefecture?

Trami, a category two tropical storm, has hit the outlying islands in the Okinawan chain – pounding the land with heavy rain and high tides.

With winds gusting as high as 134mph (216kmph), Trami has forced airlines to cancel flights, knocked down trees and left five people injured in Naha in Okinawa.

Trami made landfall in Wakayama Prefecture in western at around 12.35pm BST (8.35pm local time).

Japanese media said the storm made landfall near the city of Tanabe.

State broadcaster NHK said residents are being advised to brace for “extremely strong winds and torrential rain”.

Ahead of the storm making landfall, winds started battering Honshu in Wakayama Prefecture.

Trami is forecast to move towards Japan’s main island today.

Kansai International Airport in Osaka, western Japan, which was heavily flooded by a typhoon last month, said it had closed its runways until Monday. The airport only fully reopened on September 21.

Airlines cancelled more than 1,100 flights, public broadcaster NHK said. And most of local trains and bullet trains in central and western areas suspended operations on Sunday, operators West Japan Railway and Central Japan Railway said.

East Japan Railway said it will halt all train services in the Tokyo metropolitan area on Sunday and operations of some bullet trains were also suspended.

Japan issued evacuation orders and warnings to about 700,000 households in southern and western Japan and more than 300,000 households have suffered power outages in southern Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures, said NHK, adding about 60 people had been injured in Okinawa and Kagoshima.

A woman in her 60s went missing in Miyazaki prefecture, southern Japan, after she was washed away in a paddy irrigation channel, according to NHK.

Japan Meteorological Agency issued warning of landslides and flooding from possible storm surges.

Typhoon Trami, rated category 2 by Tropical Storm Risk, with category 5 the highest, is currently heading towards Japan’s northeast. It will cross the islands of Kyushu and the main island of Honshu between Sunday and Monday, a path similar to that taken Typhoon Jebi early in September.

Typhoon Jebi, the most powerful storm to hit Japan in 25 years, brought some of the highest tides since a 1961 typhoon and flooded Kansai airport near Osaka, taking it out of service for days.