Heavy rain brought by a southwest jet stream continued to fall in southern Taiwan yesterday, as large parts of the nation were recovering from damage caused by torrential rains on Saturday.
Tropical Storm Lupit was downgraded to a tropical depression system as it lost severity, but still brought large amounts of rainfall when it made landfall in Miaoli County on Saturday, with weather stations in Pingtung County recording the most precipitation.
Yesterday, heavy rains were concentrated in the very south of Taiwan, with the 10 Central Weather Bureau (CWB) stations that recorded the highest amounts of rainfall being in Pingtung County and Kaohsiung.
Photo courtesy of Presidential Office
In the morning, 150mm of rainfall was recorded within three hours on Pingtung’s Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島), causing flooding that blocked roads.
The Water Resources Agency issued a level 1 flash flood alert for Hengchun (恆春) and Checheng (車城) townships.
The county’s Sandimen Township (三地門) recorded 242mm of rainfall from 12am to 3pm, the nationwide highest accumulated rainfall for that period, while Magjia Township (瑪家) recorded the second-highest rainfall with 224mm, CWB data showed.
Photo courtesy of a reader
The Kaohsiung City Government dispatched a Black Hawk helicopter to bring medicines and 300kg of daily necessities to 501 residents in Fusing (復興), Lafulan (拉芙蘭) and Meishan (梅山) villages in Taoyuan District (桃源), after the only connection to the villages was disrupted when the Mingbakelu Bridge (明霸克露橋) was swept away by floodwater on Saturday.
No casualties were reported from the area, as all residents stayed in shelters provided by the district.
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp yesterday resumed two-way service between Miaoli County and Taichung after suspending the service on Saturday because a rockslide had blocked the tracks.
Photo: Yeh Yung-chien, Taipei Times
However, the service would not return to full operations until side slopes along the tracks are stabilized, it said.
Heavy rainfall caused 10 domestic flights to be canceled and disrupted ferry routes between Taiwan proper and the outlying islands of Siaoliouciou (小琉球) and Green Island (綠島), the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday.
Council of Agriculture (COA) statistics showed that Taiwanese farmers have sustained nearly NT$180 million in agricultural losses due to heavy rain brought by southwest jet streams since Sunday last week, with Tainan, and Yunlin and Pingtung counties registering the most agricultural damage.
Photo: Tung Chen-kuo, Taipei Times
Crops of papayas, peanuts and longan were affected the most, while poultry farmers lost 85,000 chickens, the council said.
In a meeting at the Central Emergency Operations Center yesterday, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) asked government officials to quickly offer relief funding to affected farmers sustaining financial losses, adding that the COA and the Ministry of Economic Affairs should monitor the market.
CWB forecaster Liu Yu-chi (劉宇其) said that most of Taiwan would remain under the influence of southwesterly winds today, with the weather in the southeast remaining unstable.
Heavy to extremely heavy rain could also occur throughout central and southern Taiwan, he said.
While humidity is expected to gradually decrease tomorrow, showers or thundershowers would still occur intermittently in southern and eastern regions, he said, adding that afternoon thundershowers were forecast in the northern and central regions.
Lupit was strengthened to a tropical storm again after leaving Taiwan proper on Saturday and is moving northeast toward Japan, he said.
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