A storm packing 145 mph winds was bearing down on the southern end of Japan's Okinawa Island, where locals and U.S. military personnel were quickly stocking up and battening down. 

Typhoon Sanba had winds equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane. (Named storms west of the international dateline in the Northwest Pacific Ocean are called typhoons, not hurricanes.)

Earlier Friday, Sanba's winds had reached 178 mph, making it a "super typhoon" in the jargon of meteorologists. That was the equivalent of a top-rated Category 5 hurricane.

Some 80,000 U.S. citizens are on Okinawa, nearly 30,000 of them U.S. military personnel. Okinawa's total population is some 1.3 million people.