Abstract
Four typhoons (Chaba, Meari, Songda and Tokage) hit the Kyushu area in 2004, and many residential houses and buildings suffered damage. Typhoon Songda (T0418) recorded wind speeds almost equal to previous peaks in various places in Kyushu. However, as compared with the big typhoons of the 1990s, such as Mireille (1991), Yancy (1993) and Bart (1999), the associated damage of residential buildings and power transmission facilities due to Typhoon Songda was not so big.The big gust factor is known as one of the features of Typhoon Mireille (T9119). The subsequent Typhoon Yancy (T9313) and Bart (T9918) also showed big gust factors, evident in the high winds in many regions of Kyushu, and many power transmission facilities suffered extensive damage. In this paper, the typhoons in the 1990s and 2004 are compared, focusing on those gust factors and using the wind data of a high-density wind observation system, NeWMeK. As a result, it was found statistically that the gust factors of the typhoons in 2004 were smaller than those of Bart in a high wind zone exceeding 30 m/s.
