The Central Weather Bureau was scheduled to issue a sea alert for Typhoon Megi as of press time last night, as the storm gained power on its way toward eastern and southern Taiwan.
By 8pm yesterday, the center of the typhoon was 920km east-southeast of Taiwan proper, moving west-northwest at 16kph, packing winds up to 137kph.
The radius of the storm was 200km, the bureau said.
The sea alert was scheduled to issued at 11:30pm last night. Because of the approaching typhoon, the Maritime and Port Bureau said that several shipping route services would be canceled today, tomorrow and Wednesday.
A majority of the canceled shipping services are in eastern and southern Taiwan, including those between Taitung’s Fugang Fishing Port and Green Island (綠島); between Houbi Lake (後壁湖) in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島) and Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼); and between Donggang (東港) in Pintung County and Siaoliouciou Island (小琉球).
Other canceled services are between Keelung and Matsu, Kaohsiung and Penghu, Taipei and Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province and Matsu’s Nangan (南竿) and Dongyin (東引島) islets.
Based on the bureau’s projected path, Megi is likely to make landfall in the nation’s southeast.
It is predicted to move across the nation and continue toward China, according to the bureau’s analysis.
To better understand the typhoon’s structure, the bureau said it will today activate the Dropsonde Observation for Typhoon Surveillance near the Taiwan Region project.
The jet used in the project is to climb to an altitude of about 13km and conduct observations in key spots along the path of the typhoon’s movement, the bureau said, adding that the data would be transmitted back to the bureau via satellite.
The bureau said the information collected through the project can reduce the margin of error in its 72-hour forecast for the typhoon’s path by about 6.5 percent.
Megi is a rare example of predictions provided by different weather forecast agencies around the world being consistent with one another, bureau Director-General Cheng Ming-dean (鄭明典) said on Facebook.
Other agencies have made only minor adjustments to their predictions of how the typhoon would move over the next few days, he wrote.
Former bureau director-general Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said it is still too early to say the exact location where the typhoon would make landfall.
Wu said the interaction between the typhoon and Taiwan’s terrain would also skew the typhoon’s path before its eye makes landfall, making its movement difficult to predict.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
RSS