Disasters Caused by Severe Local Storms in Japan

Abstract

The occurrence probability of severe local storms in Japan is much smaller than that of typhoons. But such storms sometimes cause extremely severe damage to structures. The authors describe the necessity of taking the wind effects of such severe local storms into consideration in the design of important structures such as atomic reactor plants. Severe local storms, which cause severe damage in Japan, are Tatsumakis, thunderstorms, and small whirlwinds. However, knowledge of the characteristics of these severe local storms is at present quite insufficient to be applied to the design of structures, so the present authors propose a first approximation of the characteristics of such severe local storms in Japan from field studies of damage caused by Tatsumaki and thunderstorms which have occurred recently in the central part of Japan.