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.
As China waged extensive military exercises off Taiwan, a group of US defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the nation. The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring a US perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost. “The results are showing that under
WRONG TIMING: The delegation’s trip has not only disappointed Taiwanese, but could send a wrong message to the global community, Tsai Ing-wen said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia (夏立言) yesterday left with a delegation for a trip to China, drawing fire for visiting at a time when Beijing has been conducting intensive military drills to pressure Taiwan. Before boarding, he told reporters that the delegation would be visiting Taiwanese communities and students in China, and possibly meet with Chinese officials. The Mainland Affairs Council on Tuesday night said that it was not the right time for political party members to visit China, as Beijing has been conducting military exercises since Thursday last week. President Tsai Ing- wen (蔡英文), chairperson of the Democratic
‘HONORED’: The DPP’s Lin Fei-fan said friends working in the foreign media, the diplomatic corps and at think tanks congratulated him for making the sanctions list The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday slammed China for sanctioning Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and six other Taiwanese officials for being “diehard separatists,” saying its attempt to intimidate Taiwanese would backfire. China has no authority to dictate the actions of Taiwanese, because Taiwan is a democratic nation that upholds the rule of law, and would never yield to intimidation and threats from an authoritarian regime, ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) told a news conference in Taipei. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency earlier yesterday reported that the Taiwan Work Office of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee has imposed
ORDNANCE: Under a five-year plan, the Chungshan Institute would make about 200 Hsiung Feng II and III/IIIE, and Hsiung Sheng missiles, an official said The Ministry of National Defense plans to counter the Chinese navy by producing more than 1,000 anti-ship missiles over the next five years, a defense official familiar with the matter said yesterday. The comments came after China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy began a series of military drills in a simulated naval blockade of Taiwan proper following a visit to Taipei by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Although China has in the past few years rapidly produced many warships and added them to its navy, these large vessels are more suited for warfare on the open sea than in the narrow
RSS