Two typhoons in three days

For some the word typhoon seems to evoke images of huge storms that decimate cities and wipe entire islands off the face of the earth. In some places that is true, but here in Kaohsiung most typhoons are non events. The east coast and up north usually get beat like a piece of trailer trash when there isn't enough money for beer, but here in the south west we usually avoid those Acts of God.

There is only one storm that I remember doing serious damage in our area, and that wasn't a real typhoon, just a tropical trough that stalled out on top of us and created an ARK level situation. We had gone out for dinner with some friends and it had just started raining heavily(my interpretation of a heavy rainfall has changed since I've moved to the tropics), no wind just rain.

Anyways it continued to pour like free booze down an Irishman's throat, for the entire time we were inside. Three hours later as we left the restaurant, we realized something was up. To begin with the street and the sidewalk were now underwater. We were only 2 blocks from home and in an upslope direction. At the time we lived on the 28th floor, so flooding wasn't a real issue for us.

Our friends however had to wade through some water to find their motorcycles. I reminded them that Kaohsiung had an open sewer system and that it might be a good idea to rinse when they got home. I remember Krista and Marita, carefully looking for schools of turd fish as they waded their way across the street. Another friend, John, one of those friends you keep as a bad luck lightening rod, decided he was going to try and ride his 50cc scooter home. He made it as far as the first underpass, where he lost his scooter in about 2 m of water. It sounds funny, but people die here because of stuff like that. One woman went into her building's underground parkade to check on her car and the elevator stalled and she drowned. Some others were sucked into storm drains, as they walked along roads too.

Other than having an indoor waterfall in our place - you'll have to go back to read about that bit of fun - we've never had any problems with rain storms here, other than getting wet. Last night's storm was another no event for us, with very little rain. We were supposed to have received 300 - 350 mm, but I think it amounted to 35 mm. Tomorrow's storm is supposed to bring more, but we will see how things go. The drains on the 4th and 2nd floor balconies have all been cleaned in anticipation.