Published on 16 October 2019
After forming in the Philippine Sea and rapidly intensifying into a powerful category 5 storm on October 5, 2019, super typhoon Hagibis gradually weakened as it approached Japan. Yet when the category 2 storm made landfall on the Izu Peninsula on October 12, its broad wind field and record-breaking rain devastated the island of Honshu. The storm caused widespread flooding, mudslides, power outages, and wind damage.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of Honshu on October 13, 2019, after the last of the storm’s clouds had moved to the northeast. Rivers and coastal waters that normally appear blue were instead brown with sediment knocked loose and washed away by the rush of rainfall. Large plumes of sediment-rich water rushed into several bays along Honshu’s east coast, where it mixed and swirled with seawater.