A powerful typhoon barreled toward Japan on Tuesday, prompting warnings of strong winds and high waves just days after storms wreaked devastation in Southeast Asia. Typhoon Melor (Typhoon No. 18), packing gusts of up to 252 kilometers per hour, was bearing down on Minami Daito island in Japan’s far south and may hit the main island of Honshu on Thursday, the weather agency said.

The storm has winds of up to 180 kilometers per hour near its center, it said. “Minami Daito is expected to be hit by violent winds and rough seas with a sea swell of more than nine meters from late Tuesday to Wednesday noon,” an official at the agency said.

Melor may make landfall on Kii Peninsula in western Honshu on Thursday.

Typhoon Melor, a category 4 storm currently south of Okinawa and on a path that could take it over Tokyo by Thursday, according to the weather tracking website Tropical Storm Risk.

A category 4 storm can pack winds of between 211 and 250 kph.

Melor’s winds slowed to 222 kph from 241 kph earlier today. The storm was centered 512 kilometers southeast of Naha in Okinawa at 12 p.m. Tokyo time and was earlier moving northwest at 28 kph. Navy forecasters expect Melor, the 20th storm of the northwest Pacific cyclone season, to turn northeast and reach land west of Tokyo by 9 a.m. on Oct. 8.
 

The storm’s winds are forecast to weaken to 213 kph by 9 a.m. tomorrow.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued warnings for high waves for Okinawa and southern parts of the southwestern island of Kyushu.