Another weekend, another typhoon it seems. This time is was Jangmi's turn to wreak havoc on Taiwan. The storm reached this island yesterday, and while we didn't have as much rain in our area as the last one, the winds were powerful. So strong, in fact, that our apartment building management warned the residents against using the first floor gate to go outside, saying it was safer to use the underground parking garage as an exit (the layout of our apartment complex has a tendency to amplify wind speeds, making them even more powerful). At one point, we thought the window in Amber's room was going to get blown in (and naturally we had nothing to tape it up with). Fortunately (for us, anyway), Jangmi lost some steam as it made landfall on Taiwan's east coast (in the process being downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm), and with the Central Mountain Range 中央山脈 acting as a buffer, the winds died down in our area by early Sunday evening.
Today (Monday) was declared a typhoon day, meaning all government offices (including schools) were closed, and further meaning another unwelcome day off from work due to Mother Nature. The weather hasn't been too bad, at least in central Taiwan, today, though it hasn't stopped raining for even a second all day long. Feeling cooped up from being indoors (but not being able to do anything outdoors), and faced with an unexpected holiday, we figured the best thing to do was to get out of the apartment and go somewhere indoors, like a department store or shopping mall. So after lunch, we headed off to Taichung台中. Surprisingly, though there were a lot of downed trees and torn advertising banners, there was little structural damage from the previous day's onslaught (the one exception was a large sign that had collapsed on Zhonggang Road, which had made it onto the TV news programs. We were driving by too quickly, however, for me to get a decent photo of the destruction). Our first destination, an outlet mall in downtown Taichung, was closed. For our second, third and fourth destinations (the Chung Yo and Mitsukoshi 三越 Department Stores, and the Tiger City shopping mall, respectively), it seemed as if all of central Taiwan had the same idea as we did - there were LONG lines of cars waiting to get into all three places. In the end, we gave up and went back to Fengyuan 豊原 (where it was the same story at the local department store as well!). A rather appropriate outing on a dreary day, one could say.
I don't know if it was a coincidence, but the China Post had this story in its back pages this morning:
"Japanese participated in Operation Wind Pursuit (Sunday). Launched jointly, Operation Wind Pursuit involves meteorologists in Japan and Taiwan to gather up-to-the minute information on tropical cyclones...a Japanese Falcon jet craft made a five-hour observation flight near Taiwan yesterday, as Typhoon Jangmi landed at Yilan 宜蘭 last night."
Hopefully they collected a lot of meaningful date, because it appears Jangmi is on its way to Japan.
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