Heavy rain yesterday killed a motorcyclist in Kaohsiung and forced the Tainan City Government to cancel work and classes.
The heavy rains that affected central and southern Taiwan were triggered by a southwesterly wind interacting with a convection circulation.
The Pingtung County Government closed schools and offices in Chunrih Township (春日) due to road damage.
Photo: Wan Yu-chen, Taipei Times
TV news footage showed Tainan residents pushing motorcycles through the floodwaters. In Rende District (仁德), which was severely affected, police on patrol waded through floodwaters instead of riding scooters.
Some people tried in vain to salvage their vehicles.
“When I came downstairs, my car was already deep in water. It all happened in 20 minutes,” a man told a TV news reporter.
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
A man in Tainan’s Yongkang District (永康) said that yesterday’s rain was worse than the flooding during Typhoon Morakot in August 2009, a storm that killed 619 people.
Central Weather Bureau statistics showed that at 325.5mm Tainan received the most rain from 12am to 4pm. Pingtung followed with 279mm and Kaohsiung with 269.5mm, while two or three observation stations south of Taichung recorded rain that exceeded 100mm per hour.
Tainan nearly had torrential rain, which is 350mm of rain accumulated within 24 hours. Pingtung and Kaohsiung had extremely heavy rain, which the bureau classifies as 200mm of rain in 24 hours.
The interaction of high humidity, the southwesterly wind and convection circulation at 12am contributed to the extremely heavy rain that happened in such a short period of time, bureau forecaster Chen Yi-hsiu (陳依秀) said.
Taiwan is in a zone of low pressure, in which the southwesterly wind is the dominant force, stretching from Japan and South Korea to the Philippines and the South China Sea, Chen said, adding that the nation would experience the effects of the southwesterly wind until Sunday.
Rain is expected again in central and southern Taiwan early this morning, but it would not be as strong as yesterday, she said.
From tomorrow to Friday, the wind is expected to strengthen due to Typhoon Krosa, which is forecast to move toward Japan and South Korea today and tomorrow, she said, adding that rain is forecast from tomorrow afternoon through Friday night.
Although the possibility of torrential rain is not excluded, heavy to extremely heavy rain is forecast for central and southern Taiwan before Sunday, Chen said.
Former bureau Weather Forecast Center director Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said that the atmosphere within the monsoon trough is more unstable than the one during the plum rain season.
Its ability to trigger severe weather — including thunder and lightning, strong wind, heavy precipitation, tornadoes and consecutive heavy rain — is similar to that of the plum rain season, he added.
The southwesterly wind was produced by Tropical Depression Lekima, Weatherrisk Explore chief executive officer Peng Chi-ming (彭啟明) said.
“Typhoon Krosa’s development has strengthened the southwest monsoon, which in turn increased humidity near Taiwan and made meteorological conditions unstable along the central and southwest coasts, worsening the chances of convections, lightning and tornadoes,” Peng said.
‘ASSERTIVE STEPS’: The report says that the US should enable Taiwan to construct asymmetric defense capabilities that would allow it to engage China on its own terms US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday declassified a report that casts the defense of Taiwan as critical to the Indo-Pacific strategy of checking China’s ascent, Bloomberg reported yesterday. “US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” has governed the US’ strategic response to China since Trump approved it in February 2018, Bloomberg reported, citing a statement by US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien. “Beijing is increasingly pressuring Indo-Pacific nations to subordinate their freedom and sovereignty to a ‘common destiny’ envisioned by the Chinese Communist Party [CCP],” O’Brien was cited as saying. The report assumes that China would “take increasingly assertive steps to compel unification
SECRET OUT: Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung yesterday accidentally revealed that the infections occurred at the ministry’s Taoyuan General Hospital The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported the fifth COVID-19 case in a cluster infection at a Taoyuan hospital, where four other medical workers were confirmed to have been infected over the past week. The latest case is a nurse who had tested negative on Tuesday last week, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, told a news conference. However, on Thursday, she developed symptoms, such as nasal congestion and a cough, and a second test yesterday found that she was infected, Chen said. She is the head nurse of a ward where two
PILLARS OF DEMOCRACY: US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft posted online after the virtual meeting that Taiwan should be able to share its successes in global venues President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft yesterday held a virtual meeting, during which Tsai described Taiwan as a “force for good” that deserves a place on the world stage, while Craft reaffirmed Washington’s support for Taiwan’s international participation. The virtual talk was held at about 11am, after Craft’s trip to Taiwan was abruptly canceled. She had been scheduled to meet with Tsai in person at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday morning as part of a three-day visit to Taiwan. On Tuesday, the US Department of State canceled all of its planned trips, citing a need
‘CONTAINED’: The CECC is not considering locking down the hospital where the infections were detected, as their source has been found, Chen Shih-chung said The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported one new domestic COVID-19 case, a doctor at a hospital in northern Taiwan where three other medical workers were confirmed to have the disease over the past week. The new case — No. 856 — is a doctor who had treated a COVID-19 patient together with case No. 838, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center. Case No. 838, confirmed as a locally infected COVID-19 case on Tuesday, was the first case in the hospital cluster, and later infected his partner, who is a nurse at the same
RSS