Sunday 20 May 2012

May 19th-20th Storm

It's 6am on Sunday morning and I haven't slept a wink; there's been an electrical storm hammering away over Tainan city all night, and other than a brief lull some ten minutes ago, it's been raining like Typhoon Morakot all night too. Here's a shot I just took from my balcony of the neighbourhood wastewater channel - normally it's a trickle a few inches deep, but it's now probably a good three or four feet deep and moving with a fair amount of violence.


And here's a shot of the Shangri-La hotel tower behind the school and residential buildings below; you can't even see it because the rain is so heavy - all of that greyness is rain...


Fortunately, I don't have to go to any of the factories today, so I've half a mind to drive out to one of the reservoirs just to see what the rain has done to them (and to see whether the spillways are in use), but on the other hand, now that the storm has quitened down a bit and the mosquitos have been newspapered, I might just go to sleep now and head out late in the afternoon instead.

Later: Shelley Shan reports that there was flooding in the usual areas of Yongkang and Rende districts with one person dead.

6 comments:

  1. I'm more apt to not sleep a wink when certain mayflies are hatching in the north of Michigan, which is why I'm heading there, again, after just returning home on Friday. I'll be tired on Wednesday when I return home, I know that for certain.

    Just maybe, the forecast is calling for some thunderstorms while I'm north. I kinda hope so, though I run from the water when these things pop up as I'm not real keen on standing in the stream with a graphite flyrod in my hand acting as a lightning rod.

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  2. Ha, that'd be a laugh! And with flyfishing you'd be standing about waist-deep would you not? So the wade back to the shore is going to be a bit slow!

    But how do you make the call? You can't have a radio on you because the noise would presumably disturb the fish, and if you're judging by rain and clouds alone then you're going to have a lot of false alarms, no? Ah! (Slaps head..) You'll be using a smartphone to look at the satellite image and pressure bars over the region, right?

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  3. Mike, though I have a pretty good idea what weather may be coming my way prior to heading to the water, I do not smartphone out in the stream. Instead, I just listen to what weather may be heading my way. When the thunder and lightning get too close, I call it quits, though this has caused me to have some hairy experiences, but no lightning strikes. Knocking on wood, cause bamboo is actually a grass.

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  4. Sometimes I prove that stereotype of the absent-minded prof who can't see the wood for the trees; of course you listen for the thunder approaching!

    "Knocking on wood, cause bamboo is actually a grass."

    Out here in the far east, bamboo in the wild really does look like giant, impenetrable 30 foot tall grass.

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  5. I was most impressed by bamboo's qualities and strengths the first time I was in Hong Kong and noted a 10 story tall building going up, wrapped in bamboo scaffolding. That was something to see.

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  6. The paddle I used at Wushantou reservoir earlier this year was just a long bamboo rod (about four feet) with two plastic squares slotted into grooves cut into the rod at either end and fastened with chicken wire. Very light and very strong.

    I've been thinking about making one myself just in case during my reservoir excursions later this year I find myself with a raft available but no paddle.

    One thing about the reservoirs is that they surprise me. However much I might study them on google earth, when I actually arrive there is often a totally unexpected challenge. At Wushantou this meant using a raft to try to frame the dam and spillway in profile - I'm not really happy with the pictures I took at the time and will probably have to go back to do it again sometime, but it's not a priority just yet.

    Who knows what I'll find when I go north...

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