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This weekend saw one of the biggest typhoons in recent years pass directly over Fukuoka, and it is currently sweeping up the rest of Western Japan. There have been 9 confirmed deaths from the typhoon so far, and over a 100 reported injuries. The photo above is, as it says, from 福岡市中央区大宮 (Fukuokashi Chuuouku Oomiya), and shows the sign for a parking lot that was blown down by the wind. What you don’t see in the photo is the roof of the parking lot, that just blew off and smacked the houses across the street… Alright, let’s see if we can give you a picture that shows it better. Sorry for the quality, it’s basically a photo of the TV…
Notice the sparks from the roof hitting the ground at the bottom right. What you unfortunately can’t see in this picture is the person standing just to the right! Thankfully he/she seems to have been alright.
The news report told us that the 最大瞬間風力 (saidai shunkan fuuryoku, fastest momentary wind speed) was 49 meters per second, which is the second fastest wind ever recorded in Fukuoka! For those of you who can’t be bothered calculating it, 49 m/sec is about 176 kilometers per hour, or 110 miles per hour! That’s fast wind. And here’s hoping we don’t have too many more storms like this this year…
And to get back to the business of Japanese study, note that 最大瞬間風速 is one of those phrases that looks really hard to understand at first, until you break it down into its component parts:
最 most
大 big
瞬 instant
間 ?long
風 wind
速 speed
So, all together now, it’s the most big instant-long wind speed. That’s pretty easy to understand, eh?
This particular phrase is used to distinguish it from the more commonly used measure of wind speed, 最大風速, which is defined as the fastest average wind speed over a 10-minute period. And be careful not to confuse either of them with the 最大風俗, which is not a place you would want to be seen coming out of…