More than 7 million people were told to evacuate as Typhoon Nanmadol, packing winds of 150 miles per hour, battered the country's southwest. Typhoon Nanmadol made landfall in southwestern Japan on Sunday night, and authorities urged millions of people to take shelter from strong winds and torrential rain. The storm officially made landfall around 7 pm local time (11 am BST) when its eyewall - the area just outside the eye - arrived near Kagoshima, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. It gusted to nearly 150 miles per hour, and parts of southwestern Kyushu have already seen up to 500mm of rainfall in less than 24 hours. Local officials said several people were injured. In the city of Kushima, in southern Miyazaki Prefecture, a woman was slightly injured by shards of glass when the wind shattered the windows of a gym.

NHK television said 15 people were injured, citing its own record. . As a minimum of 20,000 people spent the night in shelters in Kyushu's Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures, where the JMA issued a rare "special warning" - an alert issued only when it predicts conditions that occur once every few decades. National broadcaster NHK, which is gathering information from local authorities, said more than 7 million people had been told to move into shelters or take refuge in solid buildings to weather the storm. Evacuation notices are not mandatory, and authorities have at times tried to persuade people to move into shelters ahead of extreme weather. Over the weekend, they tried to drive home their worries about the weather. By Sunday evening, power companies said nearly 200,000 homes across the region were without power. Trains, flights, and ferries were canceled until the storm passed, and even some convenience stores — usually open for an hour and considered a lifeline in disasters — closed their doors.

At the scene, an official in Kagoshima's Izumi city said conditions were deteriorating rapidly by Sunday afternoon. “The wind has increased extremely. It's also raining heavily," he told AFP. "It's completely white outside. Visibility is almost zero." The storm, which has weakened slightly as it approaches land, is expected to turn northeast and sweep across Japan's main island on Wednesday morning. Japan is now in typhoon season and faces 20 such storms a year, with heavy rains that cause landslides or flash floods common. In 2019, Typhoon Hagibis hit Japan when it was hosting the Rugby World Cup, claiming more than 100 lives. And in 2018, floods and landslides in western Japan killed more than 200 people during the rainy season. Scientists say the climate crisis is increasing the severity of storms, making extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, and flash floods more frequent and intense.