Typhoon Roke: A hard rain

Japan is battening down the hatches (does Japan have hatches?) for Typhoon Number 15, or Roke. Look at this thing. Amateur linguists, please note that Roke does not mean "15." I don't know what it means or why there's a name and a number. Presumably these things are knowable, but you're not gonna find 'em out hanging out around here. Instead, I have amusing icons and some free association for you. First, the most sadly apt weather icon since the angry sun. If it's that windy, probably best to leave the umbrella at home and go with a raincoat. Or leave yourself at home and don't go out at all.

Second, they're trying to evacuate over a million people from the Nagoya area. Rivers are rising and streets were already flooding all over this morning before the storm had fully hit. Tokyo will get rain and wind, and there will surely be train and traffic trouble. We're not expecting severe flooding, though, I don't think. (We're up on a hill anyway. So if it gets bad, come over.)

The free association part: Almost exactly six years ago, I was flying into Houston to wait for Hurricane Rita as the city was evacuating some three million people - still the largest evacuation in US history. The storm was heading for the Gulf Coast just three weeks after Katrina, so the Tokyo Shinbun sent my boss and me there to see how badly it would go the second time around. There were only a few people on the plane. On the ground, fewer people were taking chances with being left behind post-Katrina, and the view from the sky of cars packing one side of the highway as far as we could see was incredible. Our hotel was attached to the shut-down airport. A few dozen airport employee families were sheltering for the night around the baggage carousels. I talked to some of them and then spent the evening wandering around, riding the little Disney train alone through the empty terminals. I'm not sure why I was able to do that, now that I think about it.
Rita didn't do much damage in Houston, so we drove east until we found flooding. Here's a set of photos from that night and the drive the next day. Some of the captions aren't bad.