welcome to the rainy season. though it rains quite a bit in Taiwan, the last few weeks have given us more precipitation than we have had the rest of our time here put together. i'm told that most summer rains come in the afternoon, in short-lived thunderstorms, but on Thursday night we experienced the exception to that rule.
lightning
the sky was clouded over, and the lightning diffused in amber-pink hues across it, often in flashes so bright as to be temporarily blinding; this around midnight. i threw open the large window in my room and watched entranced, even as rain dripped onto the floor--the frosted glass would have distorted my view, and it was a nice way to cool things down. the storm lasted until well after i had fallen asleep a few hours later, and with thunderclaps as booming and earthshaking as came with it, it goes down as the second most intense weather-related experience of my life.
the first, of course, was the hurricane which caused us to be stuck in Samoa and which provided me with a free trip to New Zealand at the beginning of last year. known as Tropical Cyclone Heta, it battered the Samoan islands along with several others in the South Pacific, and caused near-famine conditions for about the first six months of 2004. the satellite image taken by NASA shows the storm on January 6, after it had passed Samoa and just before it was to collide head-on with Niue. compare the size of the storm's eye to that of the island, which is about one and a half times the size of Washington, DC, and you get some idea of the tremendous power nature possesses.
weather i am glad not to have experienced was the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, which hit much of Southeast Asia and claimed the lives of thousands. this website contains an interesting graphic, near the top of the page, showing the path of the tsunami; near the bottom of the page are some amazing satellite photographs of the northern tip of Indonesia's Aceh province, probably the worst hit area anywhere, both before and after the wave. the contrast is hard to fathom; all that destruction looks more like what you'd imagine a bomb would do, rather than a wave. once again, however, the natural world helps to keep us humble.
lightning
the sky was clouded over, and the lightning diffused in amber-pink hues across it, often in flashes so bright as to be temporarily blinding; this around midnight. i threw open the large window in my room and watched entranced, even as rain dripped onto the floor--the frosted glass would have distorted my view, and it was a nice way to cool things down. the storm lasted until well after i had fallen asleep a few hours later, and with thunderclaps as booming and earthshaking as came with it, it goes down as the second most intense weather-related experience of my life.
the first, of course, was the hurricane which caused us to be stuck in Samoa and which provided me with a free trip to New Zealand at the beginning of last year. known as Tropical Cyclone Heta, it battered the Samoan islands along with several others in the South Pacific, and caused near-famine conditions for about the first six months of 2004. the satellite image taken by NASA shows the storm on January 6, after it had passed Samoa and just before it was to collide head-on with Niue. compare the size of the storm's eye to that of the island, which is about one and a half times the size of Washington, DC, and you get some idea of the tremendous power nature possesses.
weather i am glad not to have experienced was the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, which hit much of Southeast Asia and claimed the lives of thousands. this website contains an interesting graphic, near the top of the page, showing the path of the tsunami; near the bottom of the page are some amazing satellite photographs of the northern tip of Indonesia's Aceh province, probably the worst hit area anywhere, both before and after the wave. the contrast is hard to fathom; all that destruction looks more like what you'd imagine a bomb would do, rather than a wave. once again, however, the natural world helps to keep us humble.
1 comment:
Enjoying your travelogue.
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