Typhoon Soulik - Update 1

I will try to update as regularly as I have new information.  

I have new information.  And some old information that you all might just want to know.  

In case you were wondering.  I live in Taichung right now.  Which is in North-Central Taiwan.  

I'm really proud of how accurate that pin is.  Like EXACTLY where I live.  Doing this for Taiwan is hard because the English spelling of Chinese words (pinyon) is hardly standardized. 

Time for a little geography lesson.  Taiwan is an island formed from a mountain range deep on the ocean floor.  What that means is that the entire center (spine) of Taiwan is all mountains.  Pretty high mountains for the region too.  

What do you remember from 4th grade?  The blue part is obviously land.  (AD shout out!)

Mountains and typhoons have an interesting relationship.  Interestingly enough Taichung is probably the safest city on this island in the case of a typhoon.  We are very well protected by the mountains and are significantly more inland than many of the other cities. 

Additionally, typhoons are a part of everyday life here.  Think about how the US would be reacting if a Cat IV hurricane was heading for NYC.  The collective freakout would probably register on the Richter Scale.  Here?  Not a word.  Ruth and I were chatting with the woman who was doing our facials tonight and she was not in the last bit worried.  Taiwan and Typhoons.  They are practically synonymous.  This small island nation has to be built to withstand gale force winds and torrential rain.  There are channels cut into the ground to guide run off from the mountains.  All of the rivers have overflow basins.  Flooding procedures along the coasts are standard.  They've done this before and they will do it again.  It is nothing new.  

Now for news of Soulik himself.  Tracking has, surprise surprise, changed.  

Let me break this image down a little bit for you since I think a lot of the time people misread these things.  The color of the typhoon symbol indicates its wind speed. Soulik is still teetering on the edge of being a supertyphoon but I'm not going to go into that now.  He's clocking winds of up to 155 mph.  Land masses have a tendency to cool oceanic waters down and so as Soulik draws nearer to Taiwan and further into the East China Sea, the water feeding the typhoon will be considerably colder.  This tends to weaken hurricanes and typhoons.  As a typhoon weakens it is carrying around less moisture and mass and tends to speed up its movement as a whole (not the wind speed.)  Right now Soulik is a slow moving storm, he has been this whole time, averaging around 12 knots.  As we look at the distance between the typhoon symbols in 12 hour increments, we see that the three purple dots and the one red one are about the same distance apart (the typhoon is maintaining a steady speed.)  However, after landfall in Taiwan the green symbol is quite a bit further away.  Our typhoon is going to weaken.  This is all very typical.  The yellow circles around each typhoon symbol is an estimated range of where the eye of the storm may be.  Because computer predicting models are only so good the further out in time you try to predict the less accurate the model will be.  

But why the sudden drop from a Cat III storm to a TS in the span of less than 200 miles?  

If you've ever lived in a mountainous area with an otherwise predictable weather pattern (like Denver) then you are familiar with the fact that mountains do crazy things to weather.  They sometimes act like literal speed bumps for huge storms.  In this case, it would seem that Soulik is going to rage into Taiwan with 130 mph winds and then have the life squeezed out of him between the upper layers of the atmosphere where typhoons don't thrive and the jagged tops of Yushan and the like.  All of the moisture being sucked up into this beast is going to rain down on Taiwan in a fury of gales and lashing branches.  While over land, typhoons don't usually grow stronger as sources for warm water are not prevalent.  So once the life is sucked out of Soulik over Taiwan he will float on his merry way and enter China as a Tropical Storm, soon to be a Tropical Depression and then just a band of slow moving, barely menacing thunderstorms sprinkling on Korea after the storm hooks back out over the Yellow Sea.  

Soulik looks like he might weaken a bit in the next 6-8  hours because of some cold water pockets, but there is definitely a window for re-intensification in the 12 hours after that.  

"Wonderful!" you say.  "That's all fine and dandy, Bess.  But what about you!?"  

Me?  I'm fine.  I live on the 2nd floor of a recently renovated home with sturdy walls.  Ruth and I stocked up on junk food, ice cream, baked treats the essentials tonight.  Tomorrow we will grab a couple extra gallons of water, find the flashlights, etc.  We have hours and hours of movies to watch, board games to play, and girl talk to have.  We are soooooooo fine.  

I will continue to update the blog as things change.  There is plenty of time for this storm to morph into a million other things.  He could fizzle out over a trough of cold water before even reaching Taiwan.  He also could benefit from a decidedly warm wind coming up from the Philippines and strengthen into a true supertyphoon.  I will not be counting my chicks before they are hatched.  

Blog updates will go on as scheduled.  I have a rivetingly delicious one that is set to go up at 8am Thursday morning CST.  In the event that the power goes out I will have limited means to update the blog but I will do my best to be in contact with my family who will then post news as they feel appropriate.  

I want this one.  Ruth is rooting for classes to be cancelled on Friday.  Send safe thoughts and prayers my way but don't wish the storm to disappear.  I want the experience and I love the excitement.  I'll see if I can snap a few photos too.  :)  

Last post until the morning! 

B