Well, it has been a wild and wet couple of days here in Okinawa Japan, but finally things are calming down. Typhoon Bolaven, the largest typhoon to hit Okinawa in recent years just blew in and blew out. Although the typhoon traveled right over the top of us with a max pressure of 910hPa, it did minimal damage to the island, as far as I can see.
Okinawa is affected and often hit directly by many typhoons each year, according to many locals I have spoken with, recent years have been quite mild, although we were struck by a typhoon last year that lasted several days, caused mass power outages and did considerable damage to the islands infrastructure. Bolaven was expected to be much worse then it actually was, with only short power outages and very little actual damage, it seems that this super typhoon was worse on paper than in reality. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy that it wasn't a disaster area, but with all the press leading up to the typhoon, as a photographer and writer I was somewhat excited to get out there in it and capture the drama...In the end it felt more like a tropical storm and so I sit here at my computer, after a day in the wind and rain to bring you a few images from during and after the event.
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| Self portrait in high winds. My hood was slapping the hell outta my face |
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| Roofs along the coastlines suffered minor damage |
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| Fallen trees were moonlighting as traffic control |
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| Angry seas at the normally peaceful Manza mo view point |
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| Mountains of water moving past cape Zanpa; one of the most dangerous points on Okinawa |
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| Zanpa lighthouse, winds nearly took me off my feet |
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| Looking straight into the wind at zanpa...ouch! |
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| The beach was migrating to the streets |
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| Angry seas coast to coast |
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| The clean up begins |
