Tornado warnings have been issued for some parts of Kumamoto. English information about such warning can be found at
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/radnowc/
It’s good that the JMA puts this information out in English as well as in Japanese, but it’s easy to miss. There is a list of warnings for Kumamoto
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/warn/349_table.html
but no mention is made of tornados there. Actually, the same problem exists on the Japanese site. If they could do a better job of collating and cross referencing the Japanese information it would do a world of good. First, Japanese people wouldn’t have sit and painstakingly try to find information at a time when if might be necessary to move quickly to take evasive action. Second, better organization of the Japanese information would probably lead to a similar improvements on the English side of the site, which tends to mirror the Japanese.
By the way, here’s a little review of two useful sites to help you watch the weather until things calm down. First, my favorite radar site:
https://weather.yahoo.co.jp/weather/zoomradar/
It gives you a pretty good sense of where the rain clouds are now and where they are headed. It is based on the same information as the JMA site but allows you to zoom in to your own neighborhood.
To check on evacuation information go to
https://crisis.yahoo.co.jp/evacuation/43/
This is in Japanese but you can translate it with the Google Chrome browser.
– Kirk