The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) yesterday said that it could issue sea and land alerts for Typhoon Soudelor tomorrow if it increases in strength, adding that it does not rule out the typhoon making landfall.
As of 2pm yesterday, the center of the typhoon was 1,870km southeast of Taipei. It was moving northwest at 20kph. The radius of the storm had reached 250km.
The bureau forecast that Soudelor would move toward the nation’s northern and northeastern regions. It said those regions would see increased chances of showers due to the influence of the typhoon’s circumfluence.
Photo: AFP
As the typhoon approaches, the chances of heavy to extremely heavy rainfall would increase nationwide, the bureau said.
CWB weather forecast center director Cheng Ming-dean (鄭明典) said that the nation would be directly under the influence of Soudelor on Friday and Saturday, adding that the tail of the typhoon could still affect the nation’s weather on Sunday.
He said that people should be alert to massive rainfall and strong winds brought by the typhoon.
The approach of Soudelor might remind some people of Typhoon Morakot in 2009, which barreled into Taiwan on Aug. 8, when the nation celebrates Father’s Day.
The torrential rainfall brought by Morakot caused the most severe flooding in the nation since 1959, killing 681 people, 474 of them in Siaolin Village (小林) in then-Kaohsiung County, who were buried alive under a mudslide.
Historical records compiled by WeatherRisk showed that the bureau has issued sea alerts for 28 tropical storms or typhoons in the month of August, and 17 of them have hit the nation.
Among those typhoons, 11 had both sea and land alerts issued around the time of Father’s Day.
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