Thunderstorm

My last day at NPUST was pretty boring.  I got to talk to Kathryn for awhile which helped the day go by more quickly.  They started cleaning up the conference room yesterday and took down the teleconference system so we didn’t have both weather briefings.  That’s part of the reason today went so slowly.  Even though the meetings are painful to sit through due to the broken English and remote connection, they did break up the day and make it go a little faster.  Also, it has been raining off and on all day so I didn’t go for a run or get outside at all.  I’ve been working a little, but mostly playing solitaire and watching The Bachelorette.  Yes, I just admitted to watching The Bachelorette.  I’m rooting for Jessie the snowboarder if anyone wanted to know. 

We’ve been ordering in food for the past couple meals as well, which is boring and not very filling.  I wish we could go out, but the transportation situation here isn’t great.  They had another IOP going over the past 36 hours even though it’s been pretty quiet.  During an IOP they sometimes don’t have a car here so we can’t go out for dinner.  Besides that fact, it’s terrible to leave people without a car for emergency purposes and general moral on a field campaign.  So we’ll probably order in tonight again and it’ll be a boring night.  At least I get to finish this week’s Bachelorette.  Tomorrow it‘s off to Taipei and then out of here. 

Tonight we got a real bona fide thunderstorm, my first of the project I think.  The rains before had very little lightning and I don't think I actually saw a cloud to ground stroke until today.  The SW flow regime from the tropical system passage did bring some rain in the form of scattered convective showers and thunderstorms throughout the day.  The thunderstorms actually came in a little after dark which was neat.  That made for a little light show outside.  Nothing like what is going on back in the states this morning, but still, I'll take it.  That’s really about it, it’s been a pretty uneventful couple days.  I have to go pack my stuff up and make sure I have plenty of room for pictures on the memory cards for my camera for tomorrow.  Oh yeah, we ordered in for dinner but I got 10 fried dumplings and some cheesy pasta thing with vegetables and chicken so it actually filled me up.  That was a pleasant surprise.

National Park and More!

Yesterday, I stayed around the university.  I got my trip to Taipei setup for the 27^th.  I’ll be going up to Taipei on the morning of the 27^th and meeting up with one of the students here.  She lives in Taipei and offered to go around with me that afternoon and see some sights.  Taipei has a great metro system so it will be easy to get around town.  I hope to go to Taipei 101 (101 story building) and do some shopping.  There is a zoo in Taipei too, but I doubt I’ll have time.  At any rate, it’ll be fun to see Taipei for at least a few hours.  Then I’ll hang around the hotel the next morning and leave for the airport around 11 am for my 440 flight.  That should give me plenty of time at the airport to get my ticket and check in so forth.

Also yesterday I went and hit the handball on a wall on the tennis courts here.  I’ve done that twice now to keep my timing and get a little workout in lieu of running.  It is tough on one wall with no side or back walls to stop the ball.  I’m running all over after a miss.  Finally dinner was very good again last night.  We went to a fancier place and got a bunch of dishes for everyone to pick from.  There was spicy tofu, some great spicy green bean dish with pork or bacon or something, Taiwanese style bread, drunk chicken (chicken with beer), egg with fish sauce, another chicken dish with a great sauce, sweet potato leaves, cabbage, soup, rice and maybe something else I’m forgetting.  I also decided that I’m going to buy a few sets of chopsticks and use them when I make certain things back home.  I’m starting to get pretty good with them and I want to keep my skill up for any future engagements that require chopsticks.  It’s always good to be prepared.

Lastly, the tropical system is being sheared apart and not making a strong northward turn yet.  Now the latest JTWC forecast track has landfall along the east coast of China NE of Hong Kong and dissipation over the eastern section of Taiwan.  The subtropical high is fairly strong over Taiwan today as noted in the morning soundings here.  The system never made the northward turn last night or early this morning and it is still on a NW heading.  I guess the forecast track from a few days ago will turn out to be pretty close.  For some reason the models all wanted to move this system though some imaginary weakness in the subtropical ridge or move the center of the ridge to allow this northward turn.  It would be interesting to spend some time and see why these forecasts were so bad.  The forecasters here are still going for some heavy rain after the system passes to the E from the SW flow induced by it.  However they are looking at the GFS which is way too moist.  I’m not sure what I think about any of this anymore.  The global models haven’t been that great, the forecasters here aren’t that good, and I don’t have any local experience either.  I guess I’ll just take it day by day until I leave.  Let everyday be a surprise, it is more fun that way I suppose.

Quick update

Tropical Storm?

June 19, 2008

The past couple days have seen the disturbed weather come to an end with the subtropical high building in for the foreseeable future.  That does not mean we are high and dry.  Afternoon thunderstorms have occurred every day since the heavy rain event.  That makes running in the afternoon a challenge.  Yesterday there was heavy rain on campus from a thunderstorm, but the part of campus I was running in at the time was dry.  I actually ran into the rain for a minute, turned around and ran out of it because the thunderstorm was nearly stationary in the direction I was running.  It was pretty neat.  All this cloud cover is great because it lessens the heat.  I’m sweating less here than in Senegal with similar temperatures and slightly higher humidity (that’s how it feels anyway). 

We went to a very fancy restaurant today for lunch and dinner.  Lunch was good with soup a main mean and a little jello like thing for dessert.  This all cost me 4 bucks.  Ben-Jou, the lead Taiwanese scientist was here for dinner and we went to the same place again because it was pretty nice.  He paid for everything which was very gracious of him.  We even had local beer which was very good.  It was a lager but had more flavor than the typical domestics and had a smooth aftertaste.  This place had a little garden and pond outside with a little pond full of goldfish inside.  It was pretty neat.    

Also, there is a tropical storm just off the east coast of the Philippines that is forecast to head NW over the next few days.  There is some model divergence in the forecast track but the European model has the system moving very closely to Taiwan by next week.  If it made landfall here in Taiwan it would be on the southeast coast so we would be fairly sheltered here thanks to the mountains.  

June 21, 2008

I went to the NCAR research radar site yesterday.  It’s a nice setup.  The radar is good and the trailers are pretty nice.  Overall I’d say it’s a better site than NPOL has.  They even have a wireless internet link out there.  The radar is on top of levee along some river outside of Kaoshsiung near the coast.  It wasn’t close enough to see the ocean though.  It was somewhat close to a large refinery however.  There were industrial areas all along the river around the site.  There was also agriculture right next us and running along the outside of the levee.  They had many small ponds that I’ve always wondered about and finally asked yesterday.  They are fish and shrimp ponds.  They must farm a lot of small fish and shrimp because they are everywhere in the less developed areas.  I also got a close look at a duck farm.  It was similar to a chicken or turkey farm in the states, lots of birds in a small area.

The interesting news of the day is the typhoon track has been changing quite significantly over the past 24-36 hours.  The European model (ECMWF) has been the better forecast model out of the models I’ve seen.   That model has been forecasting (for about 2 days now) a more westerly track over the Philippines and near Taiwan.  The U.S. model (GFS) and Japanese model (JMA) have had more easterly tracks.  The joint typhoon warning center (JTWC) has been favoring a blend of those tracks, which is typical of most forecasters in these types of situations.  I could go on a rant about that but I’ll leave that out.  So anyway, this morning the track forecast from the JTWC has shifted MUCH farther west.  According to the JTWC forecast discussion, they finally sided with the ECMWF forecast track.  Just for reference, the JTWC website is:  http://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc.php.  They now have landfall occurring west of Taiwan, near Hong Kong, as about a 105 knot storm (120 mph, minimal Cat. 3 in Atlantic basin).  This has been a shift of about 500 km (310 miles) in their 3 day forecast track since yesterday morning.  My confidence in the JTWC forecasts and the models outside of about 36 hours is about zero right now.  But in 36 hours the storm will be west of the Philippines, which makes a landfall along the SW Taiwan coast the only real option if there is going to be a landfall in Taiwan.  That is a much worse landfall area for Taiwan than the mountainous east coast.  This makes the next few days quite interesting as a possible landfall would happen here around the early morning of the 26^th or so, two days before I am supposed to leave.  This is all still up in the air, but by the morning of the 24^th it will be pretty certain where landfall will be.

Earthquake and Rain

June 15, 2008

The intensive observing period (IOP), will run through at least Tuesday morning it looks like.  The front will be coming back north tomorrow and bring more heavy rain potentially.  The IOP is the more frequent observation reference in yesterday’s post.  The campaign is designed to run IOPs during active weather in the hopes that the increased observations will reveal a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved in heavy rain events in Taiwan.  Yesterday’s rainfall total for some areas exceeded 200 mm (about 8 inches) with about 125 mm (about 5 inches) here I think.  There was light rain all day today but I don’t think it amounted to much.

The exciting news of the day is that we had an earthquake about 25-30 miles away.  It was rated a 5.2 and it happened about 730 am.  It was very quick and I wasn’t really sure what was happening.  It woke me up because my bed was shaking and it sounded like someone next door was moving furniture around everywhere.  I thought it might have been an earthquake, but wasn’t really sure.  I then proceeded to have a quick dream about running and standing in the doorframe during an earthquake, or going on the balcony and jumping off to the ground.  Thankfully my alarm went off at 740 am so I didn’t have time to make any really crazy dreams up.  Jeremy came back from the night shift and told me there was an earthquake; we checked online and confirmed it.  So I can scratch another experience off the natural phenomena list.   I actually need to get the list organized and made but an earthquake can be scratched off when that happens.

June 16, 2008

Today I got to watch the last few holes of the U.S. Open.  I’ve been watching the last few holes every morning (in English with Dan Hicks, Jonny Miller, etc) when I wake up.  The NBA finals have also been on, although without English broadcasters unfortunately.  I doubt the U.S. open playoff will still be going tomorrow morning though with its early start time…   Anyway, that’s just a little anecdote explaining the availability of American programming and English speaking entertainment in general.  I can watch HBO, Cinemax and two other movie channels in English.  There is an all English radio station too; they were doing the weekly Top 40 the other night.   All the big roads have English names also.  It is quite interesting to see how much English is around here.  It may relate to Taiwan’s relationship with America but I’m not really sure.

Today’s weather was rainy all day.  We’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 mm (3”) of rain today, but west of here, near the coast, they’ve had over 150 mm (6”) since 8 am this morning with more to come in the next 24 hours.  Looking at some of the rain gauge corrected radar estimates over the past 60 hours, there are places that have received over 400 mm (15.75”) probably.  We’ve probably had around 200-230 mm (8” or so) here.  In talking with one of the scientists with the SPOL radar, the precipitation is fairly shallow but still quite heavy.  That explains the lack of lightning.  There also isn’t much instability present from looking at the various temperature soundings (vertical temperature profiles from weather balloons).  There is a lot of moisture through a deep layer with a little instability and some slightly larger scale lifting resulting in extremely efficient precipitation processes and heavy rainfall.  It is quite interesting to experience.  This is in sharp contrast to the typical heavy rain events or heavy thunderstorms over the central U.S.