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The torrential downpours, which dropped more than 360 millimetres of rain in some areas within 24 hours according to Reuters, flooded roads and triggered widespread power cuts affecting nearly 26,000 households across the prefecture. Chiba officials confirmed the deaths of a 66-year-old woman trapped inside her car on a submerged roadway and a man believed to be in his 60s or 70s discovered floating in flood waters, with two additional fatalities reported from the deluge that began late on Thursday. Local authorities issued the highest-level heavy rain warning for the region for the first time, as the Japan Meteorological Agency described the event as an unprecedented level of precipitation that was three times the typical August average.
Chiba Governor Toshihito Kumagai told reporters on Friday morning that the situation represented an extremely unusual event even by Japan’s historical weather standards. The governor, who has responded to numerous disasters previously, stated he had never encountered a case like this one. Rescue efforts remained the top priority as warnings for landslides and further flooding continued even after the alert level was reduced from five to four.
More than 100,000 households received evacuation orders on Thursday after the rains caused landslides and knocked out electricity to over 20,000 homes, a figure that one report from The Guardian placed closer to 400,000 residents affected by the directive. Several rail lines stayed suspended into Friday morning and major highways were closed, complicating travel during a peak holiday week. Around 7,000 passengers spent the night at Narita International Airport after transportation links were severed, though all flights resumed normal operations on Friday with only minor delays anticipated by Japan Airlines.
A resident in Chiba’s Ichikawa city told NHK that the rain arrived suddenly and caught everyone by surprise. The woman expressed concern over the power outage and whether she would be able to reopen her business in the coming days. Approximately 1,800 people sought shelter overnight at the Chiba Prefectural Government building while others were stranded at metro stations throughout the area.
The deluge forms part of an unusually active typhoon season that has already seen multiple storms impact Japan and neighboring countries this week. Earlier systems including Dolphin brought heavy rain to Okinawa and prompted evacuations of more than a million people in eastern China over the weekend, according to regional reports. In the Philippines, schools and offices were closed in the north due to flooding threats linked to the same weather pattern.
Japanese authorities have increasingly faced extreme weather events in recent years, with the current episode marking the highest recorded hourly rainfall in the country’s history at over 100 millimetres in Chiba. The combination of warm humid air from the south and colder air aloft created highly unstable conditions that the Japan Meteorological Agency had warned could lead to such outcomes. Officials indicated that the rains were forecast to continue through late Friday, keeping disaster response teams on high alert.
