Although we often get a typhoon as early as Mother's Day, it then seems to shut down for 6 weeks. Looks to be just firing up again now, which is on the blessedly early side, actually. Even though neither storm system is forecast to come to Taiwan, we'd seem to be a reasoanble chance to get some rain out of the quadrangulation below.

It's a very busy chart. I'll be pissed if we don't something.

CWB is now predicting that the bigger typhoon will swallow up the smaller one. My greatest fear was that the big typhoon that's predicted to recurve to the east will suck every bit of weather into it. I hope that's not happening.

This chart is the forecast for the same day as the last one i posted - quite a big difference. That merging thing in particular is not an exact science and pretty much anything could happen, but the smaller typhoon at least is looking more likely today of impacting Taiwan.

I don't know. This selection of possible paths indicates you have a good chance of getting something. It's now time to hurry up and wait.

It looks like Guam might get nailed by Chan-hom. They don't get hit by typhoons with the frequency of Taiwan (well, it is a small island), but when they do get hit, it's usually in a big way. When we lived there many years ago, it had had been hit a few months earlier by a major typhoon that literally took down every tree on the island. I mean, there were a few palm trees standing, but most all the vegetation was 4 feet or less.

It's looking more likely that you're going to get something, possibly more than you'd hoped.

Yeah, the smaller one to the south has gone further west than predicted, but the big one out to the east - the models have been steadily lowering the track towards Taiwan.

Finally got some rain last night - 27 mm - very welcome and today i woke to cloud cover and relatively cool air for the first time in about 6 weeks.

Check this out for a margin of error. Based on past errant predictions, JTWC is now reduced to saying that it could potentially go anywhere from Taidong to Macao!

This must be what is known as Covering Your Ass! (And 1/2 of NE Asia)

Hahaha. Actually i wonder if it doesn't still have a few tricks up its sleeve. One model is forecasting it to loop back to Taiwan.

It's pouring here now as we get an intense band of rain fed into is (which is morakot and asapi in reverse) and if the pink guys are right, or even if it stalls, then we might be looking at serious landslides by tomorrow. When i say 'looking at', i hope i don't mean actual looking at. Right now it's right on the edge of where you're thinking 'great, we've had the nice soaking we needed' and 'do i need to now start worrying about some torrential, damaging downpour?'. Which is the perfect time-space to have a daytime beer.

I am vicariously enjoying every minute of it! Beer included.

Hahaha - but sounds like you've got an interesting climate there as well - and have you cranked up the home brew yet?

We ended up getting about 150 here, so it was just on the right side of the precipice. 400 in s day was the top in pingdong.

Here's the sunrise photo from that day.

Ah, brilliant picture. Thanks for sharing. I have pics coming soon, but I'm back to using film so it's not instantaneous. I know I know, but I have these beautiful cameras from the 60's, and if you don't use them, you might as well take a hammer to them. I can't take pictures worth shit, but that's beside the point! I also found this relatively cheap gizmo that makes it very easy to digitize old negatives, so I'm in the process of doing that.

On our walk yesterday, I saw what I'm 95% sure were two wild coffee plants full of red beans. We live next to an old railroad, literally, that has been turned in to a bike path. I'll post photos when I get them.... developed... then the negatives scanned. I'm going to start taking B&W because it's supposed to be a cinch to develop at home.

So great! Wild coffee is on the menu for breakfast when i come to visit and spring board off to Cuba.

I could understand your photographic eccentricities if you were like some super photographer artist type who wanted to get back in touch with the medium - but as you're not really that...

Anyway, speaking of ordinary photograhy, here's a grainy shot of the waves from last night.

This is kind of cool. A typhoon, within a typhoon, within a typhoon.

The typhoon to the east has spawned a low pressure centre in its tail to the south east, which, in turn, has spawned an intense storm cell right over us.

The result is that it's pouring here at near typhoon strength. Over 100 mil in a couple of hours and still going strong. (CWB has us at 30% pop)