The holiday island of Okinawa is always affected by weather extremes. On the last weekend of the World Cup for basketball players, the predicted typhoon is not expected to be as bad as feared.
The organisers of the Basketball World Cup have cautiously given an initial all-clear against the threat of a typhoon. The typhoon continues to move south. Accordingly, “strong winds” are expected in Okinawa during the night from Friday to Saturday, as the organising committee announced on Thursday evening (local time). “However, no emergency warnings are currently planned by the authorities. The Okinawa region is therefore not expected to be severely affected,” it added.
Germany’s World Cup matches are scheduled for Friday (10.30 am) against Georgia and Sunday (1.10 pm) against Slovenia at the Okinawa Arena. In the coming week, the games will only be played in the Philippine capital Manila. All matches from the quarter-finals onwards will take place there.
It was only at the beginning of August that the violent typhoon “Khanun” hit the Japanese island with gale-force winds and killed at least two people. In the meantime, the power went out in around 200,000 households in the island prefecture of Okinawa. That is about one third of all households there. The team hotel of all teams as well as the World Cup arena are located in the southwest of the holiday island, about half an hour north of the capital Naha.
