Global warming is making them more violent & the number of outbreaks will increase from now on! Murderous gusts of wind blew through a multi-story parking garage in Chiba City″ collapse site″.

Damage from strong winds continues across the country

That road is one that I usually walk down often. Imagine if something that big had fallen while I was walking with my child. …… I’m so scared.”

A housewife in her 30s living in Chiba City said.

At around 10:30 p.m. on October 31, a huge scaffold for construction collapsed in the center of Midori Ward, Chiba City. The site was a seven-story shopping center. The scaffolding, which had been set up in a multistory parking lot, was ripped away by a gust of wind and collapsed, covering the promenade and bicycle parking area below. Miraculously, no one was injured because it was late at night when the accident occurred, but a single wrong move could have resulted in a catastrophe.

The scaffold that collapsed was a large one, about 20 meters high and 30 meters wide. Two-thirds of the entire scaffold, which rested on the wall of a multi-story parking garage, collapsed at once in strong winds that were believed to exceed 10 meters per second. The building houses a large shopping facility and has a ward office next door, so there is a lot of pedestrian traffic during the daytime. The collapsed scaffolding is estimated to have weighed more than 6 tons, and if people had been caught in the collapse, there would have been no way for them to get out of the way,” said a reporter from a local national newspaper.

According to Shintoshi Life Holdings, which owns the facility, painting work had been underway since June on the walls of the multi-story parking garage, leaving only the south side where the scaffolding collapsed. When the reporter visited the site the next morning, he found that part of the scaffolding, which had collapsed in a cruel, bent manner, had entered the ward office grounds, and a street tree had stuck through the protective sheet.

At the time of the gusty winds, Chiba City was under a tornado warning. An employee of the nearby Midori Fire Station of the Chiba City Fire Department testified, “The central part of Chiba Prefecture has a large rainfall area.

A heavy rain, flood, strong wind, wave, and lightning advisory was issued for central Chiba Prefecture. Strong winds were also blowing at the site of the collapse when Typhoon No. 15 (September ’19), which caused extensive damage in the prefecture, occurred. It may have been in the path of the wind.”

Speaking of strong wind damage, the tornado that hit Makinohara City, Shizuoka Prefecture, in September of this year is still fresh in the memory. One person was killed, 83 people were seriously injured, and more than 2,200 homes were damaged. In the same month of September, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, was hit by multiple tornadoes that destroyed prefabricated buildings.

Wind gusts and tornadoes occur in rapid succession across Japan. Professor Yoshihiro Tachibana of Mie University, an expert on abnormal weather, says they are related to global warming.

On the day the gusty winds blew in Chiba City (mentioned earlier), an explosive low-pressure system passed through the prefecture, a typhoon-like low pressure system that can drop more than 40 hPa in 24 hours, so it is not surprising that strong winds of around 40 m/s and tornadoes could occur. This year, which recorded the hottest summer in recorded history, sea surface temperatures are still higher than usual because of the gradual decrease in sea surface temperatures. If there is a large temperature difference between cold air from the Arctic and warm air from the south, bomb cyclones like this one are more likely to occur. Because of global warming, such strong low-pressure systems are likely to develop, and fierce gusty winds could occur anywhere in Japan at any time.

Japan will continue to be exposed to the risk of killer wind gusts and tornadoes in the coming seasons.

From the November 28/December 5, 2025 issue of FRIDAY