Typhoon Soulik -
It’s Saturday July 13 around 11AM Taiwan time as I type this. The typhoon force winds and ‘extremely torrential’ (Central Weather Bureua’s wording) have subsided here in Taichung. Now we’re down to run of the mill high winds and really torrential downpour.
Taiwan gets hammered by typhoons pretty regularly, so they’ve got preparations down to a bit of a science it appears. I went for a bike ride yesterday and noticed all of the work underway. Most obvious were construction sites with their literal battening down of the hatches. Many skyscrapers under construction here have fabric wrapped across the scaffolding surrounding the building. It was amazing to see an entire 20+ story building with all of the fabric furled and secured. Same with the giant vinyl billboards all around town - all furled and secured. It made sense to me yesterday pre storm, but after experiencing the wind howling, and the building shaking, and the windows bowing nearly all night long - it all makes that much more sense!
Here are some photos and video....
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| The coming storm |
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| Around 9AM Saturday July 13, 2013 |
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| I think I've got this correct that this was the rainfall total at that time for the area around Taichung... 480mm is over 1.5 feet of rain... at 7:38AM Saturday.... I wouldn't be at all surprised if there has been another 6 inches that have fallen since then. |
So after earthquakes and a typhoon, I guess all we’ve got left to deal with is a plague of locusts, or a rain of frogs and perhaps a possible sharknado?
Sheesh, talk about direct hit. Did you collect rainwater for drinking purposes? Did you slosh around with your bumbershoot and bare feet in the puddles in the streets after the rain-phoon? I'll bet they handled it better than the City workers in Atlanta after a 1-inch snow'storm'.
ReplyDeleteMitch! ....No rainwater collection, at least not intentional, though some incidental through the windows and doors! I did get out for a walk Saturday afternoon as the storm was in its last gasps here. It was astonishing to see a few things - first was that though it had rained like crazy, by the time I got out, the canals that lace the city to remove said rainfall were all running about as high as they do for a run of the mill passing thunderstorm. They must have been cranking earlier though. The other thing that was surprising was how quickly the cleanup happened. By Monday there very few signs that the storm had happened save for seeing where branches used to be connected to trees and some fences down etc... all the branches and leaves themselves had been cleaned up in no time.... So yeah, they've got it pretty well dialed here, and having lived through some Atlanta snowstorms, you are very correct on the comparison.
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