The first major storm of the season is now making its way across southern Japan.

It has weakened somewhat, but Tropical Storm Songda is yet another natural disaster to hit the stricken country in recent times.

This has been quite a long-lived storm, and we have been tracking its progress for more than a week now. Thankfully, it has by-and-large stayed clear of the major land masses in the Western Pacific.

It brushed the Philippines, passing to the northeast of Luzon as a typhoon before drifting east of Taiwan on its way towards Japan.

At its peak it had sustained winds of 240kmph making it a super typhoon (the equivalent of a category 5 hurricane on the Safir-Simpson Scale).

The fact that the eye of the typhoon remained over the ocean means that it has been able to maintain its warm water source, which has thus continued to feed the storm.

As a result, the outer rain bands have produced major rain events for all in its path along with very high seas. It is now weakening over the slightly cooler waters to the south of Japan and the northwest Pacific.

Feeling the effects

As the typhoon made its way towards Kyushu on Sunday morning, Japan's Meteorological Agency issued a mudslide warning for Kagoshima, where recent volcanic eruptions left the ground weak and prone to such events.

Kagoshima received 121mm of rain on Saturday. A little further south, Naze had a whopping 160mm in the same time period. Subsequently, 15,400 households suffered power cuts and 426 households lost their water supply.

Overall, the combination of strong winds and heavy rain left at least 58 people injured and 278,000 households without power. Read More