The size of Taiwan is demonstrated to me in the
fact that this is going on down south, while up here in Taipei City it
would feel like any other slightly cloudy day, if not for all of the
chairs being chained up, the typhoon warnings on every public display
in convenience stores, and our concluding EAPSI banquet down in
Hsinchu very sadly being cancelled. I just checked the weather
stations down
south, and found this as the 1:15 a.m. observation from the top of the mountain on Lanyu, where we stood two weeks ago: sustained
winds of 37
m/s (83 mph), with gusts to 55 m/s (123 mph). I don't know how accurate the wind observations are in conditions like that, but it's conditions like that, so it doesn't really matter.
It's crazy to think that the islanders down there
are
used to such things. Hoping for the best for friends and everyone down south.
Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing! It's amazing to me how much bigger the island appears in a case like this. I was in the forecasting "hot seat" this morning at JTWC, and it was a big challenge to figure out how Tembin is going to behave after crossing Taiwan... good example of the crazy TCs in the West Pacific compared to the relatively well-behaved storms of the Atlantic!
ReplyDeleteWe were watching this at the CIMSS tropical discussion in Madison today, and found the Lanyu obs afterward - very impressive. Just have to hope that the solution sporadically portrayed by the GFS in which Tembin loops SE and then back W across Taiwan again in about 7 days doesn't play out!
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