The Tokyo Olympics, already struggling with an outbreak of COVID-19 among athletes, is on alert about another kind of disaster next week – a typhoon.

Tropical storm Nepartak has formed south-east of Japan and could make landfall north of Tokyo early next week with winds of at least 74 kilometres per hour on US wind scales, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre, a US Navy and Air Force forecasting operation in Hawaii.

“That is really all they need,” said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist with the Energy Weather Group. “A tropical storm coming right toward Tokyo.”

Reports of the possible typhoon were greeted with glee by some surfing competitors, Reuters reported.

“It’s small but there is swell on the way! Let’s go,” Australian surfer Owen Wright on Instagram following his first practice session at Tsurigasaki Surf Beach, where competition begins on Sunday.

International Surfing Association president Fernando Aguerre told Reuters in a telephone interview: “There’s going to be good waves, there’s a strong typhoon here off the coast of Japan and we know that the waves are getting bigger.”

No matter how rough the weather gets, New Zealander Ella Williams said competitors would take it as it comes.

Typhoon Nepartak, right, heads for Japan on Saturday. On the left, typhoon In-Far.Credit:Zoom.Earth

“We’re prepared for that, we’ve been preparing for a while. It brought us here and we’ll be fine,” she said.

Organisers were preparing for the typhoon, having already rescheduled Monday’s rowing competitions to integrate them in the schedule for Saturday and Sunday, Reuters reported.

Nepartak was about 1520km south-east of Yokosuka, Japan, on Saturday morning and was moving north-eastward, the centre said. Japan has not issued any warnings or watches. The US uses a different system to measure tropical winds than most other countries.

It is the second storm in the region. Typhoon In-fa is currently off the east coast of China and was expected to make landfall in Zhejiang province this weekend, bringing heavy rains to China and Taiwan. At least 33 people were killed and hundreds of thousands evacuated in Zhejiang this week, when it was hit by a deluge described as one in a millennium.

An intense tropical storm, also called Nepartak, killed dozens of people after striking east China and Taiwan in July 2016. It was known as typhoon Butchoy in the Philippines.

Bloomberg, Reuters

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