Heavy rain over Taipei and New Taipei City yesterday afternoon flooded multiple areas in Daan (大安) and Xinyi (信義) districts, prompting the Taipei City Government to upgrade the alert status to level two.
Taipei City Councilor Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) shared multiple pictures of flooding in Xinyi and urged the public to be careful.
People in Nangang District (南港) complained of flooding, saying that the water level in some areas was about half the height of a scooter and the amount of rain was reminiscent of a typhoon, KMT Taipei City Councilor Lee Ming-hsien (李明賢) said.
Photo courtesy of a reader
Heavy rains test the city’s drainage system, Lee said, calling on the city’s flood-related units to be on standby.
The Taipei City Government said that all four of its weather stations reported rainfall exceeding 100mm, and the Central Weather Administration had issued a heavy rain alert for Taipei and New Taipei City.
Although the convection cell was slowly moving out of Taipei in a northeasterly direction in the afternoon, Shilin (士林), Beitou (北投) and Neihu (內湖) districts still experienced sporadic rainfall, the Taipei City Government said.
Wenshan (文山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts also experienced heavy rainfall, while New Taipei City’s Sijhih District (汐止) issued a level one flood alert in the afternoon.
Flood alerts indicate when water levels reach the flooding point or the top of the dikes. Level two alerts mean it would take five hours before the flooding point is reached, while level one alerts indicate that it would take two hours.
Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) paused all ground staff activities at about 1:35pm and lifted the alert by 2:30pm.
Songshan Airport said that the pause in ground staff duties affected 15 flights and led to delays at airports serving it.
The Civil Aviation Administration urged travelers and those collecting people from airports to pay close attention for any changes in flight information.
The sudden heavy rain had “drowned” parts of Xinyi, and afterward, it became a “surfing area,” Taipei residents said.
Yesterday afternoon, people at Xinyi shopping district said the rain had inundated the district’s sky bridges and turned the pedestrian paths into “rivers.”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS