Rainfall in central and southern Taiwan brought by seasonal winds from China on Sunday was not enough to ease drought conditions in those areas, the Water Resources Agency said.
Rain fell for about five minutes at about noon in Kaohsiung, making little impact on the area’s dry conditions, the Southern Region Water Resources Office said.
Since Saturday midnight, the most rainfall recorded in Kaohsiung was only 10mm in the mountainous district of Taoyuan (桃源), while Beimen District (北門) in Tainan had the most rainfall in the municipality with 3mm, the Central Weather Bureau said.
Photo: Hsieh Chieh-yu, Taipei Times
Kaohsiung last year experienced the lowest rainfall in 30 years, and in the first few months of this year it received only about 40 percent of its historical average.
Things were slightly better in Chiayi County.
The Leye water purification plant saw an inflow of 1,300m3 of water, 500m3 more than normal, which should ease a water shortage in the rural Fencihu (奮起湖) area near Alishan (阿里山), said Tsai Po-yuan (蔡博淵), deputy director of Taiwan Water Corp’s Fifth Branch.
No apparent increase in the inflow of water was observed in the four distribution reservoirs in the Alishan area, but they were still supplying water at normal levels, Tsai said.
Sporadic rainfall has been seen in Nantou County since Saturday evening, but there was no apparent increase in water levels as of Sunday afternoon.
As of 5pm on Sunday, the Wushe Reservoir (霧社水庫), located upstream of Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), was at 16.08 percent capacity with 5.92 million cubic meters of water, slightly more than the 15.66 percent on Saturday.
The weather front is expected to continue to affect Taiwan today, after which the mercury is likely to rise and cloudy to sunny skies would appear tomorrow, said Daniel Wu (吳德榮), a former bureau Weather Forecast Center director who is now an adjunct associate professor of atmospheric sciences at National Central University.
However, another weather front would arrive on Thursday, bringing rain, especially in mountain areas, Wu said.
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