A sea alert could be issued this morning as Tropical Storm Linfa turns north to enter the Bashi Channel, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday.
Bureau statistics show that the storm was 430km south of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) at 2pm yesterday.
The bureau says the storm might head north after passing through the Philippines’ Luzon Island.
The bureau said there is a good chance the storm will only skirt the nation’s east coast on its way northward. However, it does not completely rule out the possibility that it might make landfall in Taiwan if the storm’s progress north slows or it turns at a smaller angle than expected.
According to the bureau the high-pressure system in the Pacific Ocean and Typhoon Chan Hom — which is about 2,700km from Taiwan — could alter Linfa’s course.
The bureau said the storm could continue to affect the nation’s weather until Thursday because of the gradual weakening Pacific high-pressure system, which could slow Linfa’s progress.
Other weather agencies have differing estimates of Linfa’s potential impact.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said the storm would only sweep through the sea near the east coast and continue to move north, whereas the Joint Typhoon Warning Center of the US Navy and Air Force said it is likely to make landfall on the southeast coast on Thursday or Friday.
Although Chan Hom is moving toward Japan’s Ryuku Islands, the bureau said it would monitor if the high pressure system would prevent the typhoon from moving north and consequently have an impact on the nation’s northeast coast.
Typhoon Nangka would not affect Taiwan in the short term, as it is still more than 4,900km away, the bureau said. The bureau also reported that it had detected large waves off the coast of Yilan yesterday due to the storm.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS