Typhoon chaser’s firsthand account of his pursuit of Shanshan

James Reynolds, a seasoned typhoon-chaser and video producer based in Japan, has built a career of venturing into the eye of nature’s most ferocious storms. While many document the aftermath, Reynolds thrives on capturing the raw, untamed power of a storm in real time, positioning himself at the center of the action.
As Typhoon Shanshan bore down on Japan last week, Reynolds was there, braving the elements to get a firsthand experience of the storm’s fury.
The Japan Times spoke with him to gain insight into what it was like to be in the heart of Shanshan, referred to as Typhoon No. 10 by the Meteorological Agency, as it unleashed its power on the Kyushu region.
What made Typhoon Shanshan stand out as worth chasing?
My threshold for chasing a storm is usually when it reaches hurricane or typhoon force — sustained wind speeds of at least 65 knots, which is about 120 kilometers an hour. That’s when a storm is intense enough to potentially cause serious impacts upon landfall. Obviously, weaker storms can still have major impacts, but it’s more hit and miss.
In Shanshan’s case, there was unanimous agreement among all the major weather models — the ECMWF (European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) from Europe, the GFS (Global Forecast System) from the U.S., as well as models from Japan, Canada, and Germany. They all predicted that Shanshan would become a strong typhoon, heading north at severe intensity. With that level of consensus in the forecast, I had a strong suspicion it was going to be a high-impact storm.
How did you prepare for Shanshan, given its unpredictability?
To be honest, there wasn’t really anything different in my preparations. I kind of approach all storms in the same way. The most important thing is you have to be flexible and fluid in your movements.

Initially, when it looked like Shanshan was going to hit Wakayama Prefecture or Shikoku, I planned to drive from Tokyo in my own car. So that’s what I did — I headed down to Wakayama on Sunday to base myself there and see what would happen. But then everything started shifting westward, which was a bit unusual. I have seen that kind of thing happen before, but this was a more pronounced case.
Because of that shift, Shanshan was unique from a personal perspective — it threw me off in terms of where I was locating myself. So I ended up driving back to Tokyo, keeping my car there, and then flying to Kagoshima, where I rented a car. Most storms I chase are more straightforward — I either drive to the area, and the storm comes ashore, or I fly in. This time, I had to change my plan halfway through, flying to Kyushu, renting a car, and figuring out locations to film where the storm would come ashore. It turned into a more unorthodox chase than usual.
How would you describe the conditions on the ground as the storm approached?
It was, in many respects, a classic typhoon scenario. We landed in Kagoshima around 9 a.m., and while the weather was a little rough, there wasn’t too much wind at first. But that was about 12 to 15 hours before landfall, and as the day went on, the weather progressively got worse and worse.
The intensity of the squalls increased, the sustained winds on the coast steadily picked up, and by the time we were along the coast in Kyushu, the weather had started to get quite dangerous. The winds were strong enough to knock over trees and start doing damage.

Things really got intense when the inner eye wall — the strongest area of wind and rain that surrounds the storm’s center — crossed over the town where we were stationed. That’s when you get the classic typhoon conditions: howling winds, rain filling the air, and visibility so poor you sometimes can’t see across the street. That’s always the spot I try to get into because it’s where the most severe weather is taking place.
What was the most challenging aspect of chasing Typhoon Shanshan?
The terrain in southern Kyushu can be really challenging. There are a lot of mountains, the coast is rugged, and many of the roads go through forests and over hills. When I’m chasing a typhoon, it often involves a lot of last-minute relocations in bad weather, and you have to make those decisions with careful deliberation. It involves taking risks, and those risks increase when you’re dealing with terrain where flooding can happen easily, or when you’re driving through forests where trees are falling down. Those are the kinds of places I like to avoid if possible, but sometimes you can’t help it.
One challenge that often presents itself is that in many small towns and villages in Japan where storms hit, there’s often a lack of weather equipment or weather stations. We carry portable weather instruments such as barometers to measure the central pressure of the storm. Getting the most accurate measurement means being in the center of the eye of the storm, which isn’t always possible.
With Shanshan, we didn’t manage to get into the eye, as the storm tracked slightly offshore. However, Makurazaki (in Kagoshima Prefecture) has a fully functioning JMA (Meteorological Agency) weather station, which took some pressure off us regarding accurate measurements. While we still did a lot of weather readings with our devices, having that government facility provided additional data and reassurance.

Another challenge with Shanshan was trying to read exactly where the eye wall was going to hit the coast. The forecast had the storm missing the southern part of Kyushu but then curving up and crashing south of Nagasaki. But a few hours before the storm hit, I was convinced it was going to miss.
Then, something quite unique to southern Kyushu happened — the storm started interacting with the mountainous island of Yakushima, which is off the coast. Yakushima is a high, mountainous island, and I believe that interaction helped drag the storm east, closer to the coast of southern Kagoshima instead of letting it drift further west. This was an unforeseen influence that brought the storm closer to the coast, causing Miyazaki to get hit by the eye.
Did you encounter any unexpected phenomena during the chase?
The interaction between Shanshan and Yakushima definitely fits into the category of unexpected phenomena. There was also some interesting weather going on in Kagoshima city itself. It almost seemed like the Sakurajima volcano across the bay was enhancing the wind as it came across.
There was noticeable turbulence and added disturbance in the vicinity of the volcano, with strange vortexes and sudden powerful gusts of wind that seemed isolated to the area immediately downwind of the volcano. There was a lot of weird and unexpected weather going on in that area.
What kind of interactions did you have with locals during the storm?
In Shanshan’s case, we very much just kept our heads down and focused on what we needed to do, so we didn’t have much interaction with local people. We were constantly on the move, doing reconnaissance of the coastline, regrouping in Kagoshima city, and then heading back out to Makurazaki later in the night. I always have a motto: either make yourself useful during the storm, or more or less make yourself invisible. You just get on with the job at hand without getting in anyone’s way.
But there was one interaction that stood out. I had a quick chat with a fisherman in the port who was watching with concern as his ship was being battered by strong winds in the inner bands of the typhoon. I pulled out my phone, showed him the radar, and gave him an approximate timing of when the storm was really going to kick off. He seemed appreciative of that.
Overall, in Japan, people are typically just minding their own business, getting on with what they need to do, and we do the same. In other countries, we often have a lot more interaction with locals during storms.
How do you prioritize safety during a storm chase?
Safety is always the priority. Early on in my career, I cut corners in that respect and had close calls that could have been prevented. Chasing a typhoon is a continual exercise in risk assessment. Everywhere we go … we do reconnaissance, we’re always assessing how we could possibly get killed or injured and trying to negate as many dangerous factors as possible.
For example, are we going to be safe from waves or storm surge flooding? Are we going to be safe from landslides or flash floods? Are we going to be near a river that could burst its banks? Are we going to be by a building that could blow apart or throw debris at us? It’s always a case of considering those factors.
In Makurazaki, I’d been there before, so I knew the town, and I was confident we found a solid building to take shelter behind. We knew what the wind direction was going to be, and we planned accordingly. This was one of those chases where everything went to plan.
We put a lot of effort into planning it properly, and it was a well-executed plan. It doesn’t always happen that way, but the longer you do this, the better you get at trying to foresee what could go wrong and mitigating those risks.