Hiroshi Taniguchi

Power outages are a widespread societal impact of tropical cyclones; however, the relative roles of different meteorological drivers remain poorly quantified at the regional scale. This study investigates the relationship between power outages and meteorological conditions during Typhoon SHANSHAN (2024) across Japan using nationwide outage records, together with precipitation and wind observations from the Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) network. Time-series and lag-correlation analyses reveal statistically significant relationships between outages and both rainfall and wind gusts, with maximum correlation coefficients reaching approximately 0.5–0.8 depending on region and lag times ranging from approximately 1 to 20 h. The relative meteorological driver varies systematically across regions. Northern Japan exhibits wind-dominated behavior with relatively long lag times, whereas central Japan, particularly in the Tokai region, demonstrates rainfall-dominated responses with short lag times. Western Japan exhibits mixed wind and rainfall contributions. These results demonstrate that outage occurrence cannot be explained solely by proximity to the typhoon track but instead reflects region-specific meteorological forcing and different temporal response characteristics among regions. These findings provide new insights into regional outage-meteorology relationships and may contribute to improved risk assessment and preparedness for future tropical cyclone events.

This survey report investigates the gap between disaster prevention weather information and residents’ evacuation behavior during the August 2014 Hiroshima Heavy Rain Disaster. Although meteorological forecasting technology has improved, it does not always lead to effective resident action. To understand this discrepancy, we conducted semi-structured interviews with five residents in the affected Asaminami Ward and analyzed 88 narratives from published experience records. We mapped residents’ subjective “moments of anxiety” and “evacuation decisions” against objective meteorological data (precipitation and warnings). The survey results reveal that residents’ sense of crisis often lagged significantly behind the issuance of warnings and was instead triggered by direct sensory perceptions of danger (e.g., sounds of rain and debris flow). This report provides qualitative data highlighting the specific cognitive barriers to using weather information in rapid-onset disasters.