Tropical storm Nepartak could emerge as biggest name at Olympics on Tuesday

TOKYO – It was all about the names on Sunday at the Olympics. 

Chase Kalisz. The American swimmer who won the gold medal in the men’s 400 individual. 

Horigome Yuto. The Japanese skateboarder who won the gold medal in the street competition. 

And Nepartak. The country-less brute.

Not even Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressel are big enough names to stop him. 

Nepartak, originally the name of a famous Kosrae warrior, is a tropical storm that on day 2 of the Tokyo Games helped elevate weather forecasting into an Olympic sport. 

If you’re betting on the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, then Tokyo was within the dreaded forecast cone as of Sunday afternoon. 

If you're betting on Kurt Korte, official forecaster for the Olympic surfing competition, expect waves 5 to 7 feet high Monday but winds that could spoil the surf.. 

If you're betting on the nice woman at the International Olympic Committee news desk, who are we to judge. When asked if the IOC had an update on Nepartak, she pulled out her phone and opened a bookmarked weather forecast site. 

She looked glum, too, as she pointed to the blue squares, signs of rain coming Monday and Tuesday. Later in the day, the rowing competition set for Tuesday was canceled.

It could be bad news for softball, too. Bad news for beach volleyball. Bad news for any sport conducted outside, because unless Nepartak veers course, the great outdoors won’t be great at all. 

However, the surfers cautiously welcomed the approach of Nepartak. These are the same athletes who were hoping for a typhoon to help generate bigger waves. 

On Sunday, the modest waves surfers feared hindered their sports’ Olympic debut. But there was hope. Nepartak, at first a typhoon. 

“Fundamentally, in order to get surf, you have to have strong winds blowing over a big area of ocean for a long period of time,’’ Korte said. “If you don’t have any one of those factors, the surf can be pretty small. So this time of year, it’s obviously the northern hemisphere’s summer, we’re looking at tropical systems as our main source."

But for surfers, there’s a potential problem with Nepartak, along with other tropical storms, or typhoons and cyclones. 

“Ideally, you want it close enough to where the swell does not decay significantly between where it’s generated and the beach,’’ he said, “but also far enough away where you’re not negatively impacted by the winds and conditions and the rain." 

With Nepartak roaring, Forte, who works for a company called Surfline, has started his day at 4 a.m.  

The waves could be as high as 7 feet Monday, but strong winds could make it too choppy to capitalize on those bigger waves, according to Kevin Willis, who also works for Surfline. On Tuesday, he said, the surf might be more contestable with the waves still formidable at between 4 to 7 feet. 

But Surfline was offering no forecasts for softball, beach volleyball  and the other outdoor sports as IOC officials remained at the mercy of the tropical storm named after the famous Kosrae warrior. 

“There will be some sports that will be impacted,’’ said Mikato Kotani, sports director for the Tokyo organizing committee. “We are closely discussing with the (international federations) anything we should change.’’ 

Nepartak will have the final word.