It's still quite far off but with the sub-tropical ridge building in to the north, it looks like this typhoon might follow a pretty predictable path along the bottom of the ridge - straight to Taiwan. It's kind of the classic scenario. At the height of typhoon season.

The models have already aligned pretty much.

Below is the forecast chart for Firday evening.

Avant le Deluge

Typhoons usually kick up beautiful skies just before they arrive.

Blew hard all day but then the wind dropped off around evening - like the first growls of a waking beast.

Dan, i will check on both your old places later and see if you would have died.

It looks like you're in for it. Might want to tie your hat on for this one.

That's looking pretty interesting.

Seems to be going north of here - it can be surprising how little effect it has when it's north - though will still be a big deal in Hualien and Ilan.

Gusting up from north east. No real rain yet. Mountainous seas.

Nearly 3am Taiwan time, and part of Yilan County is getting 100mm/hour so far today, and nearly 800mm in the last 24 hours.

Yeah, starting to bear some resemblence to Fanapi/Morakot. Crossed the island and actually dipped south.

Big, ragged eye over central west coast and so an intense band of rain is circling Taiwan virtually unimpeded over water and feeding into the south west. Hopefully it will move on quicker than the other two storms did.