Taiwan Tea Guy

Part of living in Taiwan means getting used to the weather - damp, cold winters and hot, humid summers. When June rolls around, it also means dealing with the yearly typhoon season, which runs from mid June through October. Since our first typhoon of the season is approaching from the Philippines, I thought I’d better put up some information here for reference.

Typhoons are basically the same as hurricanes, only they occur in the western Pacific instead of the Atlantic ocean. There is sometimes confusion about intensity and size of typhoons, because different rating systems are used. A condensed comparison chart follows below. For a more detailed breakdown, click HERE.

 Hurricane (Western Scale)          Typhoon (Taiwan Scale)

Level 1: 74-95 mph                  Level 1: 40-73 mph                              

Level 2: 96-110 mph                Level 2: 74-113 mph

Level 3: 111-130 mph              Level 3: 114+ mph

Level 4: 131-155 mph

Level 5: 155+ mph  

The approaching typhoon, Fengshen, has been hitting the Philippines pretty hard the past 2 days. Click HERE for more about that. The storm is predicted to arrive in Taiwan late Monday/Tuesday. It currently has sustained wind speeds of 67 mph, so it’s not too strong yet, but will likely get stronger as it crosses the Bashi channel between Taiwan and the northern Philippines. The real concern for Taiwan is that the west side of the island is pretty flat, and typhoons approaching through the Taiwan strait (between Taiwan and China) tend to do more damage. The eastern mountain ranges usually absorb a lot of the energy from typhoons coming in straight off the Pacific, lessening their impact. Also, southern Taiwan has had extremely heavy rains the past two weeks, and they have already had extensive flooding damage, so the timing is exceptionally unfortunate for the farmers and residents in the Tainan - Kaoshiung areas.

Here is an interesting link if you’d like to follow the storm’s progress. This is the Taiwan Weather Bureau website. To access updates for the storm’s path (photo at left), go the site. Click on Typhoon (left side menu), then Typhoon News. For the satellite imagery (picture above), click on Observations, then Satellite (also on left menu). If you click on the 12 hour button on the right side, you can see timelapse photography of the storm’s development (I really like this page - it puts the storm into perspective).

Other than landslides and flooding, typhoon damage isn’t usually as serious as some of the Atlantic hurricanes have been (when Katrina hit New Orleans, we had a similar-sized typhoon the next day that seemed pretty tame in comparison). Part of that is because of our mountain ranges, and partly because most construction here is done in concrete, which holds up pretty well. Our usual preparation generally involves taking down my gazebo tarp, cleaning up the yard, stocking up on snacks. If we don’t have to work, we usually watch the news and drink tea. If the power goes out, we light candles and drink tea. I’ll update as the storm approaches, so check back this week.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Life in Taiwan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.