© NASA
Typhoon Lan, a storm with an eye 50 miles wide, is expected to lash parts of Japan with intense wind and rain, the country's meteorological office has warned. Currently west of Okinawa, the typhoon is travelling north towards mainland Japan.
According to forecasts by the Japan Meteorological Agency, the "large" storm will barrel across the
nation on Sunday before subsiding on October 23.
NASA imagery reveals the huge scale of the typhoon, with pictures taken by the Suomi NPP satellite revealing powerful thunderstorms swirling around an eye 50 nautical miles in diameter.
The US space agency stated that on October 20, Lan's wind speed reached a whopping 115 miles per hour. It clarified in a later tweet that the weather system has not been designated a "super storm"
.Extreme rainfall, described as "walls" of precipitation, were 3-D mapped by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland earlier this week.