Though its wind speeds were not impressive compared to many typhoons, Nangka caused great concern for Japanese authorities on 16 July 2015. The typhoon was slow-moving, a characteristic that tends to produce the highest rainfall totals and allows for large storm surge waves to build up. The Japanese Meteorological Agency was calling for as much as 800 millimetres (nearly 3 feet) of rain in portions of the rugged, mountainous regions of southwestern Japan.

The storm made landfall near Muroto City on the Japanese island of Shikoku around 11 p.m. Japan Standard Time (14:00 Universal Time) on 16 July. In the lead-up to the storm, the government advised nearly 4,000 residents of Kochi Prefecture to evacuate their homes for fear of landslides.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite acquired this natural-colour image of Typhoon Nangka at 02:05 Universal Time (11:05 a.m. JST) on 16 July 2015. Shortly before the image was acquired, Nangka was a category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds of about 130 kilometres (80 miles) per hour, according to Unisys Weather.

The storm had a long evolution, becoming a typhoon on 4 July and traveling nearly 4,000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean. One week before its arrival in Japan (9 July), the storm had maximum sustained winds of 250 kilometres per hour (155 miles per hour). On 13 July, infrared and microwave imagery, revealed a double-eyewall structure that often leads to an decrease in intensity, according to a blog post by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies. The storm then weakened as it turned north toward Japan.

View the full resolution image.

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory