Level 5 Heavy Rain Warnings Issued Temporarily for Toyama, Ishikawa

Tokyo, Aug. 27 (Jiji Press)--The Japan Meteorological Agency temporarily issued Level 5 heavy rain emergency warnings to some municipalities in the central prefectures of Toyama and Ishikawa on Thursday.

The Noto Peninsula area in central Japan started to have heavy rain early Thursday. The emergency warnings were issued at 6:20 a.m. for the city of Himi in Toyama and the city of Hakui and the towns of Shika, Hodatsushimizu and Nakanoto in Ishikawa. Level 5 is the highest on the agency's disaster alert scale.

Linear precipitation zones developed intermittently in the two neighboring prefectures facing the Sea of Japan. The five municipalities issued the highest Level 5 emergency evacuation warnings, urging residents to immediately take measures to protect their lives.

The emergency heavy rain warnings were downgraded to lower warnings at 4:20 p.m.

As the region may have heavy rain again later in the day to Friday, however, a high level of caution is still required for flooding of low-lying areas, overflowing of rivers and landslides, the agency said.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]