The first stationary front of this year’s “plum rain season” will not bring as much rain as expected, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday.
Meiyu jijie (梅雨季節), or plum rain season, refers to the rain brought by stationary fronts that generally arrive between May and June — coinciding with the plum season.
The plum rain season is Taiwan’s main rainy season, with precipitation in the months of May and June, on average, accounting for approximately one-third of the year’s total, the bureau said.
TYPHOONS
Heavy rains also occur from July to September, when typhoons normally hit the country, it said.
The bureau said the first front in this year’s plum rain season arrived on Monday, causing temperatures to drop from above 30˚C to around 28˚C. It also turned the sky from sunny to cloudy nationwide.
The bureau said that Pengjia Islet (彭佳嶼) in Keelung County had the highest accumulation of rainfall at approximately 10mm yesterday.
Overall, accumulated rainfall over the past few days in the cities of northern Taiwan varied from 20mm to 40mm, the highest among all the regions. A majority of the rainfall occurred on the coastal and mountainous areas in the north.
“We estimated that the front will continue to linger along the North Coast for the rest of this week. It will potentially bring more rain when it gets closer to land,” bureau forecaster Wu Wang-hua (伍婉華) said.
NO RAIN
CWB statistics showed that Taiwan did not experience any rain between May 7 and May 12. In fact, no rain was reported in Hsinchu, Tainan and Kaohsiung between May 1 and May 10.
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