Finally, the first big downpour of the mei yu season has arrived on May 29. Oddly enough, it only happened when the front had passed over us (going north to south). Was preceeded by a burst of strong north east wind and the sight of an impressive band of dark rain clouds out to sea. Started around 10.30am and has continued raining all day with a few breaks. Late afternoon the rain stopped for a while, but then the sky turned quite dark and soon started up again with added vigour and has continued to rain heavily since. Up to about 40ml by now and if it keeps up at this rate i'd say we could get to 80-100 or more by tomorrow morning. Fengbing in Hualien has already had 200. Started on north east coast, crept down the coast, and then spread island wide.
Two low pressures to the S of Taiwan may be responsible for a lot of the moisture in the system.

Update: it's 11.30 and i've collected 120 ml in my rain guage and it's still going strong - getting about 30ml an hour - this could go as high as 200. We've managed to go from well below the monthly ave to well over it in a single day. Plus there's lots more instability about for the whole of this week.

Final Rainfall for XC, May 29, 2012: 198ml (from abt 10am to 2-3am the next day)

rainfall as of 11.00pm. Interestingly, the west coast is virtually dry - shows the rain is coming in from the north east and not making it past the central range. But that doesn't explain a patch just south of Taidong city that also seems almost dry.