Yeah, it's been a bloody dry run. I wrote to CWB to ask if last year was the driest on record - i could see from the data they supply on their site that it was the driest in the last 10 years - and they sent me back a series of forms to fill out and told me it was $100 per year for the info - about $10k all up.

In Aus, after a few years of virtually no rain they start calling it a drough, but in Taiwan a couple of dty seasons can seriously tax the reservoir supplies because they are so reliant on a few annual big falls.

However, the mei yu season is due to start at any minute so hopefully that will bring some relief. The below coldfront on the forecast chart looks like it could be a mei yu front - that chart is for Monday, supposedly, so see what that brings.

Taidong usually gets one huge downpour per mei yu, but it's hard to say when - sometimes it's been early May, in the first days, and sometimes mid-June, right at the end.