My First Typhoon!

I knew it was only a matter of time, but today and into tomorrow I am going to come face to face with my first typhoon. Okay, okay, so its only a tropical storm right now (it's called Kalmaegi) and the main part won't hit Taipei. I've known about the storm for a few days now since it's been brewing north of the Philippines but I was still a little surprised by the rain we are already getting this morning. You can check out the storm here: http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/index.htm.

Update: So typhoons are overrated. Yesterday morning it was raining pretty hard and its continued to rain for the last 24 hours but there wasn't much wind or anything. Then again the storm passed to the south of us and we caught the outside edge.

The BBC has some pretty good coverage of the typhoon here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7513441.stm. I had no idea that there were some deaths as a result. Some of the deaths were from landslides, which could well be the result of betel nut production. The hardest hit areas, like Kaohsiung/Gaoxiong, are at the southern tip of the island and I am at the north so I really didn't get much in the way of winds. Either way I can only imagine the amount of rain that they got down there.