The Central Weather Bureau yesterday said it could issue a sea alert for Tropical Storm Kai-Tak today, the season’s 13th tropical storm, as it threatens sea areas near southern Taiwan.
Kai-Tak strengthened to a tropical storm at 8am yesterday. As of 5pm, the center of the storm was located 710km northeast of Manila. It was moving northwesterly at a speed of 13kph. The radius of the storm has reached 100km, packing sustained winds of 64.8kph, with gusts of up to 90kph, the bureau said.
Bureau forecaster Lin Pin-yu (林秉煜) said Kai-Tak’s circumfluence would reach Taiwan tomorrow if the system’s path and speed did not change, increasing the chance of heavy rain in southern, northern and eastern regions.
The bureau said the radius of the storm would sweep through the Bashi Channel and the Hengchun Peninsula before moving toward Fujian Province, China. The storm is expected to come very close to the Hengchun Peninsula on Thursday and could make landfall there, the bureau said.
The bureau said it could issue a sea alert today, which would apply to eastern and southern parts of the country.
Lin said Kai-Tak was not likely to turn into a typhoon by the time it reaches Taiwan, adding that the storm would gradually move away from Taiwan on Friday.
Today, chances for afternoon thundershowers are high in northern, central, southern and northeastern regions. Cloudy to sunny skies are forecast for other regions as well as on the islands of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.
In related news, the average price of vegetables has soared to NT$41.82 per kilogram this month as fruit and vegetable supplies were drastically reduced because of the torrential rain brought by Typhoon Saola as well as heavy rainfall earlier this year.
The Taipei City Market Administration Office reported that the average volume of fruit and vegetables was 653 tonnes earlier this month, the second-lowest in the past decade.
The lowest volume on record, 639 tonnes, was set on Oct. 7, 2007, when the nation was hit by Typhoon Krosa.
The office said it would take action to prevent vegetable prices from rising further.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS