[Anchor]

Heavy rain has battered Japan once again, just two weeks after record-breaking downpours struck Chiba Prefecture. This time, nearly two months' worth of rain poured down on the central-western region in just 12 hours, with rising temperatures believed to be the cause.

Mun Junmo reporting from Tokyo.

[Reporter]

The boundaries between rivers and roads have vanished as muddy torrents rush violently by.

Trees have been uprooted by mudslides, and floodwaters have risen high enough to reach the door handles of buildings.

Vehicles stranded in the water are visible everywhere.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued its highest-level Level 5 "Heavy Rain Special Warning" for parts of Toyama and Ishikawa prefectures at 6:20 a.m. today.

More than 300 mm of torrential rain poured down over a 12-hour period until this morning.

Linear rain bands formed as rain clouds stretched out in long strips, dumping nearly double the region's typical August rainfall all at once.

[Local Resident: It is a first. There has never been anything like this. This is the first time I realized how terrifying linear rain bands can be.]

The Japanese government temporarily issued an "Emergency Safety Assurance" order targeting 180,000 residents.

This is a final-stage directive instructing people to take the best possible action right where they are, such as moving to a higher floor if traveling to a shelter is too dangerous.

Residents, robbed of their early morning sleep, evacuated in cars cutting through water that reached their headlights, or rolled up their pants and waded through waist-deep floodwaters.

Residents with limited mobility escaped by riding rescue boats.

[Rescued Resident: This is the first time water has risen above the floor inside my house. I thought the news about the Chiba downpours was horrifying, but I never imagined it would happen here too.]

Following the severe damage in Chiba Prefecture on the 13th, where flash floods left 13 people dead, experts point to rising temperatures as the reason behind this latest unprecedented downpour.

[Tetsuya Takemi / Professor, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University: Data shows that for every 1-degree Celsius increase in temperature, rainfall intensifies by about 7 percent.]

This means that as the average temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius, the amount of water vapor in the air increases correspondingly, leading to a 7 percent boost in precipitation.

The Japanese government has urged vigilance, warning that another heavy downpour could strike tomorrow morning.

(Reported by Han Chul-min and Moon Hyun-jin | Video edited by Nam Il | Design by Kang Yoon-jung)