(Bloomberg) -- Typhoon Shanshan is set to strike western Japan Wednesday, causing as much as $10 billion in damage and losses from winds, storm surge and flooding rains.
Shanshan was 590 miles (950 kilometers) south of Kochi, Japan with top winds of 80 miles per hour, making it a Category 1 storm on the US five-step, Saffir-Simpson scale, the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. It is forecast to become a very strong typhoon or a Category 3 storm as it approaches Japan’s coast later this week, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The typhoon will bring a crashing storm surge to wherever it hits, but its main threat may well be flooding rain that will drench a wide area across western Japan and its south-facing coastline.
Shanshan will likely make landfall at Shikoku then cross southern Honshu causing from $6 billion to $10 billion in damage and loss, Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research, said Sunday.
The track forecast has varied in the last few days and it has to be watched. Watson said if the storm ends up rolling over the Osaka-Kobe area damages could rise to $12 billion to $20 billion.
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