Rain Rain Go Away =UPDATED=X4 + TYPHOON BONUS YAY!

From my FB friends: Chungli train station after several days of rain. 

Wow. After several days of rain, the island is a sponge, with more still to come. In the south, where 60 cm of rain has fallen in the last 24 hours, schools and other organizations are closed, including major universities. In New Taipei City, schools below the college level are closed. UPDATED: Facebook and reader comments indicate business closings all over Taipei.

Since this post is several days old, I've moved everything below the READ MORE link....




Remember, if businesses remain closed for another day, food and other supplies may be difficult to obtain. Plan ahead. Also, prices of vegetables are going to skyrocket in subsequent days as the farms are getting brutally pounded. Remember too that with so many vehicles drowned in floods, the used car market is going to be full of cars and motorcycles that are waterlogged and not good purchases.

Media reports 3,000 evacuated due to flooding, several deaths. Going to get nasty in the mountains this week. More pics making the rounds of Facebook:

and a typhoon is due in a few days:

Central Weather Bureau Typhoon Advisory says Happy Weekend!

A lovely capture from Taipei city from photographer Darren Melrose

My friend Nathan grabbed this picture of the bridge from Wufeng into Tsaotun. This is all run-off from the mountains. There must be massive destruction up there.

Taoyuan Train Station totally flooded.

Graduation canceled due to rain!

Mucha in Taipei.

Taiwan's sub program bears fruit.

From 侯娃娃 via Sean Kaiteri. Taken from a bridge outside of Luzhou in Taipei County.

Posts on Facebook:

Crazy storm. Drove my scooter to work. I've never seen such intense, sustained rain. The sewers are overflowing all over the streets. Happy to have made it to work safe.

It's like a typhoon without the wind but with massive lightning-- massive torrential downpours last night and into the morning. MRT filled with extremely wet (rain and sweat) commuters mouldering up the car.

From Yo Ho via Adam Hislop.

Josh Ellis, photo of Pingchen.

From the CWB, which is predicting more of this through Saturday.

Another Taipei denizen posts:

I wouldn't usually be able to hear myself whistle on Wanfang Road during morning rush hour. But today I could. Three hundred millimetres of rain has fallen in Wenshan District (Taipei) in the past nine hours. A storm drain has burst and the road has subsided. I pootled down to the new embankment that overlooks the Jingmei River. The water is wall to wall; the outer wall, that is. It smelt of oil. Among the flotsam were a lot polystyrene tubs with vegetables still growing in them. It's still well below the level reached in 2000, as recorded by a plaque outside the Muzha Vocational High School. It's unusually noisy at home: the traffic from Wanfang Road has been diverted through my neighbourhood, and the rain's still hammering down.

Xindian River. From Betty Ho via Tammy Turner.
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