then the forecast for tomorrow is a shocker - 39C with winds up to 80kph! Good luck stopping a bushfire in those conditions.

That's Hawaii disaster type conditions.

There are currently fires in Perth outskirts that have destroyed a dozen or so houses, but then the forecast for tomorrow is a shocker - 39C with winds up to 80kph! Good luck stopping a bushfire in those conditions.

Straight into the record books!

Taiwan records world's 3rd highest wind gust during Typhoon Koinu

As Typhoon Koinu's storm circle enveloped Taitung County's Orchid Island at 9:53 p.m., the Orchid Island weather station measured a gust of 95.2 meters per second or 342.72 kph (212.95 mph), exceeding level 17, the top of the Beaufort scale, CWA reported. The Taitung weather station said the measurement broke Taiwan's 126-year record and the anemometer was damaged.

According to Huang, this measurement was the highest seen in the 126 years since anemometers were first installed in Taiwan in 1897. In addition, such was the force of the winds generated by Koinu "the anemometer then broke down."

One question is, if the meter broke, how do they know the wind didn't go any higher?

That's surprising! Coz it wasn't even that big of a typhoon, supposedly, Cat 2-3?

The thing about typhoons though is they're made up of gusts - or threads of wind. You really get that sensation as they're approaching, it can go from almost calm to a house-rattling gust, then it dies down again until the next gust. As it gets closer, those gusts get stronger, longer & closer together. Even in the eye-wall, there is still that same underlying pattern, though obviously the base-wind is stronger.

So somewhere within Koinu there must have been a rip-snorter gust.

Residents of south Taiwan will be looking for a break, though worryingly, the charts suggest there's another one brewing. Oct typhoons hitting Taiwan are not common, but occasionally there will be a season when they seem to keep coming. Latest i can remember was Nov 1, the year before Nari. It produced a one-in-a-hundred year flood - beaten the very next year by Nari with its one-in-two-hundred-year flood.

Taiwan records world's 3rd highest wind gust during Typhoon Koinu

As Typhoon Koinu's storm circle enveloped Taitung County's Orchid Island at 9:53 p.m., the Orchid Island weather station measured a gust of 95.2 meters per second or 342.72 kph (212.95 mph), exceeding level 17, the top of the Beaufort scale, CWA reported. The Taitung weather station said the measurement broke Taiwan's 126-year record and the anemometer was damaged.

According to Huang, this measurement was the highest seen in the 126 years since anemometers were first installed in Taiwan in 1897. In addition, such was the force of the winds generated by Koinu "the anemometer then broke down."

One question is, if the meter broke, how do they know the wind didn't go any higher?

It's interesting how it's not just the winds generated out from the centre of the typhoon that rock, but, as the image shows, winds sucked into the typhoon.

CWB has two windiest places currently as Lanyu (no surprise) & Penghu, which is a little surprising. Shows how the wind wraps around Taiwan & barrels down the strait even quite far from the centre of the storm. The wind image below shows how it makes a perfect '6' formation.

The eye is quite big, making the track somewhat deceptive. Although it's going through the southern tip of Taiwan it's about 50km wide - which puts Taidong City right in the firing line of the northern section of the eye-wall - which is the strongest part wind-wise.

This looks like it has the potential to dump a lot of rain on Pingtung and Kaohsiung depending on its speed.

Side note: That's a pretty crappy map by CWB - if you didn't know you'd think Kaohsiung is where Taidong is. Despite that, their 24 hr tracks are usually very accurate - to within 20-30km

Wind speed is building - up to 135 kt gusts as it approaches Taiwan - which is similar to the last one.

Not good news for those in Dulan still recovering from the last battering. It's hard picking up the pieces from one hit - taking a second blow within just over a month is downright depressing.

In this case, torrential rain from Storm Daniel caused a dam to burst its banks, which then caused another dam downstream to collapse, which then sent a wall of water through populated areas.

Some estimates are saying the death-toll could reach 20 000!

Meanwhile, the se coast of Taiwan is still getting drenched. 250 mil in Cheng Gong yesterday & it's pouring there again now.

There does seem to be some opposites balancing act going on with predominantly hot dry conditions in Aus. As i remember, during the floods in Aus, it was unusually dry in Taiwan.

This, i guess, was due to the centre of the eye going in over Dong He, with Dulan in the eye, but 10k south, meaning the wind was coming more from the south east than the north east, as it usually does.

Places exposed to the north-east, that are used to bearing the brunt of typhoons, didn't get hammered as bad this time (though still hammered), whereas places exposed to the south east got hit a lot worse than they normally would.

Lot of damage to Brian & Minshu's Highway-11 bar/shop (again) - pretty much everyone is looking at some kind of damage. A few people got caught out by the electricity going out quite early in the piece - meaning they couldn't close their metal shutters - so a lot of water inside houses.

Power is still out & guess it will be out all night.

But everyone is ok - just sucks having to do that clean-up work - it can take weeks of (unpaid) work to get things back in order.

Top rainfall is 550 mm in Hualien - no surprise the biggest rain is always north of the eye on the east coast & south of it on the west coast. Remains to be seen where the tail rain ends up but probably mid to north Taiwan.

Now that the eye is nearly across the island - pretty much right over Kaohsiung - the southwest coast is copping it. Pingdong always cops it somehow.

Until it hits China coast (at least another 24 hrs) & loses some drawing power, it will continue dragging rain across through its tail, so i'd expect a wet night for many areas.

Biggest rain will be Taidong/Hualien border area right up to northern Ilan.

Check out that tail - looks like a dragon - lot of rain to be dragged through with that.