Typhoon Jangmi

Since everyone seems to be asking about our welfare, I thought I'd blog a bit about the storm that has hit headlines all over the world. I think it even made the front page of CNN.com! In any event, if you've been living in a cave or bogged down by obnoxious political rants, this past weekend brought Taiwan yet another typhoon. This one was named Jangmi. The name Jangmi was contributed to the greater typhoon naming bureau by South Korea and it is Korean for the word rose. It's hard for me to imagine naming a storm after a delicate flower, but perhaps they are metaphorically comparing the opening of a rose to the gentle unfolding of the storm...



And it was a very gentle beginning. Matter of fact, as of Friday night it was only supposed to nick the southern portion of Taiwan and blow some rain our way (Taipei is waaaayyy north). Friday night was quiet. Saturday morning there was light, misty rain and everyone was still out and about. Including us! By Saturday night the rain got heavier and there was some evidence of "whistling" wind. You get that a lot here. These tall buildings are so close together and when the wind whips through them it whistles! Or screams - depends on whether or not it wakes you up from a dead sleep and you have no idea what is going on. Anyway. By Sunday afternoon all hell broke loose. It was raining in a hundred different directions and the wind was fierce. If we read all of the weather reports correctly, this turned out to be a category 5 storm with winds reaching 90-125 mph. Monday we had our very first "Typhoon Day." It's like a snow day, but no snow. All of the government offices were closed, schools were closed and imagine this - IBM was closed! Matt was still glued to his laptop, but things at work were much slower than normal. By Monday the storm was pretty much past us, but a lot of rain fell.



Besides looking around our little village, it is very hard for us to gage what kind of damage was done to Taipei. We cannot understand the local news and the larger venues for news tend to mention the event on the island as a whole. Caitlin and I went out to the park today and all we could see was natural debris. The clean up crews were already out sweeping up the streets with their adorable pointy Chinese field worker hats. These hats are a riot! They are painted in florescent orange and yellow stripes so they can been seen (for miles). The kids at the elementary school were out cleaning up the playground with giant sets of chopsticks. Everyone is getting a jump on the cleaning while it is still cool (let me tell you, 82 degrees almost feels cold). The continued thick cloud cover keeps the sun from baking us. I love the sun and bright blue skies, but the coolness feels glorious!



I've attached a video clip that Matt took of the storm on Sunday. Enjoy!