Nine Dead As Record Rains and Floods Hit Eastern Japan's Chiba Prefecture

The downpours, which began late on Thursday, triggered landslide warnings and power outages, with forecasters issuing the highest-level heavy rain warning for the Chiba region for the first time. A weather station in the prefecture recorded 300mm (nearly 12 inches) of rain in 24 hours, making it the area's wettest August in six decades. By Friday morning, the city of Chiba had logged more than three times the rainfall typically seen in the whole of August, according to Tokyo's land ministry.

Nine people have since died in the rains, NHK reported Sunday morning, citing its own tally. Chiba's disaster management office as of Saturday evening listed eight dead, some trapped inside submerged cars and others found on flooded streets. More than 70 houses across the Chiba region were partially destroyed by the rain, the prefecture's latest tally showed.