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Today will be cold and rainy as cold front lingers

Decorated with traditional dancing lion decorations, the Hsinyi business district in Taipei is crowded with shoppers, despite the cloudy and rainy weather yesterday. PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

The Central Weather Bureau said that today will be colder and damper than yesterday, and the temperature will drop about one degree or two degrees. It will rain in the northern, eastern and northeastern areas of Taiwan since a cold front approached the nation yesterday, the bureau said.

But conditions will get warmer and rainfall will be reduced starting Sunday, bureau meterologist Hsiao Chia-sen (蕭家森) said yesterday.

According to Hsiao, the fog that delayed many flights and slowed freeway traffic over the past few days should start to dissipate today. However, the fog will still be heavy in the early morning, and the bureau warned drivers to be careful while on the freeway, Hsiao said.

Meanwhile, many people were stuck in traffic jams on the northbound national freeway yesterday, as thousands of people started returning home yesterday morning. In order to relieve the heavy traffic flows, the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau (國道高速公路局) announced that drivers will not have to pay tolls from 10am to 4pm today.

Freeway bureau worker Kang Chih-fu (康志福) said that some sections of the national freeway will implement traffic control measures that limit the number of passengers per vehicle today, including on the northbound Sun Yat-sen Freeway from Kaohsiung to Neili and the northbound Formosa Freeway from Jiouru to Tahsi from 7am to 7pm.

According the freeway bureau's estimate, the number of vehicles driving on the freeway might be over 2.5 million -- more than the number last year.

Kang suggested that drivers should call the information hotlines "168" or "1968" to learn about traffic conditions and to avoid possible traffic jams.

International flights, which were affected by heavy fog earlier in the week, have gone to back normal since Thursday.
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