This year’s plum rain season is to be warmer than usual, while rainfall amounts are likely to be within the normal range, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday.
The plum rain season generally occurs in May and June, and is named after its coincidence with the ripening of plums in southern China, the bureau said.
Heavy rains during the season are caused by stationary fronts that hover above southern China, Taiwan and Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, it added.
Photo courtesy of the Central Weather Bureau
A typical plum rain front is formed when the atmosphere is influenced by the southwest monsoon, Weather Forecast Center Director Lu Kuo-chen (呂國臣) said.
“Stationary fronts arrive with the southwest monsoon, often facilitating the occurrence of large-scale and heavy precipitation,” he said.
The plum rain season in northern Taiwan generally begins in the first half of May, while southern Taiwan usually does not experience plum rains until the second half of May, bureau data showed.
This year, heavy rainfall brought by plum rain fronts is likely to affect the entire nation in the first half of this month, a phenomenon that has happened five or six times throughout the nation’s history, Lu said.
The bureau had previously forecast that the first plum rain front was to arrive today, but Lu said that the front is to be moving, not stationary.
Last year, a typical plum rain front did not appear until June 5, marking its latest arrival, Lu said, adding that the timing of its arrival is not correlated with the amount of rainfall that is to occur during the season.
After examining its own data, as well as forecasts from other weather agencies around the world, the bureau forecast that Taiwan is likely to see a warmer plum rain season this year, while the amount of rainfall is to be within the normal range, Lu said.
Rain this month would be within the normal range or slightly more than average, while next month would see rainfall within the normal range or slightly less than average, it said, adding that the weather in July would be dry and hot.
Plum rains have caused some damage in the past few years, as stationary fronts often lead to more intense and stronger rainfall, Lu said, adding that this has also created a challenge for weather forecasters.
Starting today, the bureau is to provide rainfall forecasts every three hours whenever it detects that large-scale, heavy precipitation is to occur, including rainfall forecasts for each city and county within 24 hours and for the next three days, it said.
Meanwhile, the nation experienced a warmer and dryer spring this year, with an average temperature from February to Sunday of 22.23°C, higher than the average of 20.51°C over the period, bureau data showed.
The average rainfall recorded at weather observatories across the country was 280.8mm, below the average of 348.08mm over the period, the bureau said.
Fifteen stations recorded their highest-ever spring temperature, it added.
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