Rainy season kicks off

Radar image showing heavy rain over Murakami City area (orange)

Rainy season kicks off today in a big way for the Niigata area, especially northern Niigata around Murakami City and the Miomote River basin. Since early this morning heavy rain has been falling across Niigata Prefecture, but looking at the radar image above for 0930, we see the heaviest rain is falling in a band across northern Niigata. The orange colour is indicating more than 30mm/h! Checking the Amedas data for Miomote it shows that indeed more than 30mm/h has fallen the past two hours. Takiya River is headed for a big flood with these rainfall intensities. Look at the real-time stage data for the Arakawa River (link on right panel) and you can see it is rising steeply already.

Takiya River in rainy season (2007/06/29 10:38), stage = 1.38m