I just got back from a 3 week break to visit my family and friends in Canada and was curious about what’s been going on with the weather here during that time. Have the May rains come and gone? Or are they still on their way? They seem to be later arriving in recent years, if memory serves. What’s been going on weather wise?
rains seemed to come pretty early this year. since then a couple of typhoons have passed by far to the east and have helped keep things pretty cool. in general it has seemed like a very cool may.
So far it’s been a pretty dry May but you know what they say “don’t cast a clout until the last dragon boat is sunk” or something like that.
I do hope we get sufficient rainfall this spring. I don’t want a repeat of water rationing measures, which we last saw about 5-6 years ago.
Can you elaborate on those rationing measures Mer? I wasn’t aware Taiwan had experienced water shortages.
oh yeah always a threat if the spring rains fail and less than the usual typhoon water comes in.
About six summers ago, if I recall correctly, we had poor rainfall during the winter and spring and the main reservoirs up north in Taiwan were so low that the city and county began water rationing measures. It was a rotating 24-48 hour ‘no water’ plan, with different districts and areas taking turns going without water for 1-2 days. If the water tanks on the top of your apartments buildings were sufficient enough and people in your building weren’t complete morons (no guarantees there…), then you probably didn’t run out of water for toilets and just the other necessary day to day things.
It really did suck though. Coming from Canada, the land of fresh water, it freaked me out a bit. It lasted about a month or so, the real water shortage crisis, until mother nature started sorting us out again.
Well now, according to the CWB, we r supposed to see some thunder showers today in northern Taiwan …hmmm…who turned the tap off???
Of course, during the droughts did anyone think to use the opportunity to dredge the reservoirs and increase their capacity?
They did map out plans for doing just that, and, to give credit where credit is due, have actually carried them out very well.
During 2003~2007, the government dredged 19.49 million cubic meters of silt from Taiwan’s reservoirs. This increased the annual water supply capacity of the dredged reservoirs by 38.98 million cubic meters, equivalent to double the current effective water-storage capacity of Agongdian Reservoir, or sufficient to supply the annual water consumption needs of 438,000 people (at an average of 89 cubic meters per person per year).
That’s quite impressive, don’t you think?
I am visiting the Shrmen reservoir quite frequently as it is more or les “behind my house” and they are working on it all the time since about 2 years. They are deepening it out and always cleaning the stuff out which comes in during typhoons in the upper part of the reservoir. They also work on the main dam itself, not hundert percent sure what stuff they all do but it’s ongoing construction all the time.
The Shrmen reservoir is also quite empty at the moment, never saw it that low so I hope the heavy rain we have at the moment helps a bit even it looks like it need way more than that to just show a bit of an effect.
For a while the whole Dahan river was almost dried out right behind the dams here.
Don’t worry! I think they have arrived! We will get a bucket load of the wet stuff this week. Lovely 
Well it better be a couple of buckets, that’s how Shimen reservoir looks like now, and it should be full at this time of the year. That’s about 15 meters down, the lowest I ever saw over there.
It was lower in 2002. Much lower. Worry when we are say 10 meters above dead storage.
And… Errm, the annual water cycle works like this:
- Summer, reservoirs fill up due to typhoon rain. Some of the rainwater is stored in forests in the catchment area. Thus the new govt penchant for high mountain conservation.
- 1 September, reservoirs are full.
- The reservoirs are slowly drawn down over the rest of the year, with replenishments from periodic rains and releases from natural storage in the water catchment areas.
- Start of summer - reservoirs are drawn down.
So now is the time where the reservoirs are supposed to be at their lowest, actually
[quote=“Mr He”]It was lower in 2002. Much lower. Worry when we are say 10 meters above dead storage.
And… Errm, the annual water cycle works like this:
- Summer, reservoirs fill up due to typhoon rain. Some of the rainwater is stored in forests in the catchment area. Thus the new govt penchant for high mountain conservation.
- 1 September, reservoirs are full.
- The reservoirs are slowly drawn down over the rest of the year, with replenishments from periodic rains and releases from natural storage in the water catchment areas.
- Start of summer - reservoirs are drawn down.
So now is the time where the reservoirs are supposed to be at their lowest, actually[/quote]
Not quite, they should be down before January and start filling from February on and than the spring rains start and May should be “the wetest month”. But now is end of May, so they should be quite a bit up already as there are usually daily rains at this time of the year. We had this nice trip last year to Taipei, started at dry condituons and got into that nice “waterworld” in the afternoon at the Taiwan handcraft shop and was a daily happening than.
Might be that it was lower in 2002 but in the time I am here it’s the lowest I saw ever and last year they had already complainings about low levels going on.
Here the statistics, they didn’t have Taoyuan on there, so went for Xinzhu:
Station Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Total Duration
Hsinchu 74.8 152.5 196.5 191.3 282.4 279.2 140.0 206.8 114.9 44.5 44.8 55.0 1782.7 1991-2000
This year so far:
Hsinchu 72.7 97.4 186.9 188.9
difference this year so far: 69,2 mm, thats quite a bit for that 4 months, no data for May yet but I would say we are no where near the 282,4 mm besides it starts to pour down the last 3 days like the big flood…
Here is 2002:
Hsinchu 30.4 48.1 121.3 28.6 91.5 207.2 199.1 108.4 150.9 32.0 8.9 64.6 1091
So yes, not a big thing yet as June usually holds a fair bit of rain too, but if it stays like now it might get a bit narrow.
Also it seems the tyhoons last year washed quite a bit into the Shimen reservoir, they are digging out a fair bit on the upper end. Was up from Fuxing last week, also seems that this barrier holding back gravel broke last autum:
Anyway, in couple of days they should have the May data too, we can start speculating than again.
Errmm, are those figures for the flatlands or for the water catchment areas?
I can’t get into www.wranb.gov.tw right now, they have all the figures there. We followed those figures closely in 2002 as water shortages would have hit the Taoyuan and Xinzhu based electronics industry hard.
During the plum rains, everybody prayed for early typhoons.
[quote=“Mr He”]Errmm, are those figures for the flatlands or for the water catchment areas?
I can’t get into www.wranb.gov.tw right now, they have all the figures there. We followed those figures closely in 2002 as water shortages would have hit the Taoyuan and Xinzhu based electronics industry hard.
During the plum rains, everybody prayed for early typhoons.[/quote]
Well just look at the photo up there, that was taken last Friday, that’s all what’s left from the river coming down to Fuxing. So there is not much water in the mountains as the water level is way down, no buffer from there, or even meaning that if it starts raining it will first fill up what the forrests hold back before you even feel it in the rivers.
I looked up figures over the whole north of the island and they all show about 12% less rain in the first 4 months, but May is not yet included and it was compareable bone dry (few little rain showers, but nothing compared to the daily heavy rainfalls we usually should have in May).
I used to Kayak on the dam and the main river that feeds it and I can tell you that Shr Men is NOT low. That is just the back part that fills up with water to the tree line only when there are heavy rains from a typhoon. Our water supply is fine. I have seen it much lower and at those times there was no mention of water rationing. Try and get down to the water next time. And if you can get on the water in some kind of craft, you will be able to see just how extensive the dam is and just how much water it holds.
Wasn’t there water rationing in 2002? At the very least a fair bit of land was laid fallow?
I agree, it’s not low. When it’s anywhere near critical, the local media and f.com will throw oodles of info after you, IE in 2002 the newspapers would report on the water levels in Shimen and Feicui every day.
I never said it was critical, just that it is almost 15m below the normal at this time of the year. So instead of the month of the year with the most rainfall which should fill it up it went down and yes I know that 2002 was worser.