Wow. Typhoon Mindulle hits Shanghai today!
I happened to drive to Beijing Road from Pudong around 10:00 AM today. It started to rain. Soon, it became super heavy rain. I shifted my windscreen wiper to the fastest but still cannot see the car before me clearly. I felt my car was running at the bottom of sea, like a submarine. There is a long tail of splashed water after every car. The whole city looked so strange when I passed the Nanpu Bridge – like those in oil-painting.
At night, the wind became stronger and stronger. I sat before the window and watched the huge trees outside swinging back and forth. I have bind all the two small trees to the fence tightly so they will not get hurt in the typhoon.
Unlike Taiwan and Fujian, people in Shanghai seem to love typhoon. It cools down the whole city but does not bring too much trouble as it does in other places.
> The whole city looked so strange when I passed the Nanpu Bridge – like
> those in oil-painting.
Why dont u take some photos and share with us? :)
It is a pitty that I was driving – it was not easy to handle the car without taking pictures already. :-D On the road, there is always some interesting scene but I cannot take them.
Typhoon Mindulle was weakened by passing the island of DRC Taiwan, and became a tropical storm.
Today’s rain in Shanghai had a different reason than originating from the monsoon.
Friday afternoon at 17:15 july 2, I came to Hongqiao in the airplane from Yichang, and the air was SO clear in Shanghai so I could see Dongfangminju and Jinmaodasha from there. That’s REALLY, REALLY unusual !
The reason was that tropical storm “Mindulle” has moved all the dirty air westward. I was just about 100 km west of Shanghai before the air cleared up, before that it was the same air-“soup” as usually seen over Shanghai.
This evening we went for a walk in People’s Park, and the wind increased as we walked there. Some small branches was broken from the trees, that was all.
Now it’s still raining and a little windy.
I guess the event today was just some strange weather, totally ignored in Shanghai but only a few people, who really knew that the storm in the China Sea was the reason for it…
The last typhoon to come close to Shanghai was “Rammasun” in 2002, a more powerful storm, a real typhoon. See the link :
http://www.chinagate.com.cn/english/2577.htm
5 died…. I was at that time in Pudong, and I guess that it was there the guys died, totally unaware of what was coming to them, just doing their work.
Track of Rammasun can be found at :
http://www.eorc.nasda.go.jp/TRMM/typhoon/html/summary/all_2002s_WP_e.htm
Here’s my personal report from last year when I encountered a full mediumsized typhoon.
I was in Ulsan, East Korea, when typhoon “Maemi” hit the southern part.
Maemi track – see : http://www.eorc.nasda.go.jp/TRMM/typhoon/html/summary/all_2003s_WP_e.htm
The US Joint Typhoon Warning Centre from Hawaii had predicted the course of this typhoon to hit Busan City in Korea 7 days after the first recordings.
They did not change the predictions in the 7 days, this was VERY unusual !
No news TV stations in East Korea thought it possible that it would hit them, as most typhoons hits west Korea.
13:00 – still no news. Fact was, that the typhoon already had hit the Island of Cheju, and did severe damages, with wind speeds up to 60m/sec.
16:00 – now there was real panic, all prepared for the raging winds, but it was holiday in Korea, so the authorities didn’t want to scare the people…
18:00 – I went to sea park in Ulsan to see the roughness coming, it was blowing heavily ! When the heavy rain began, I drove home quickly.
21:00 – after finishing dinner I was going outside of a restaurant.
It was only light rain, but with heavy wind gusts. The umbrella simply broke in 5 seconds. No fun that evening, just going home to check that all things was secured – cars: handbrake drawn firmly, outside furnitures taken inside, things moved away from the windows…
Wind now maybe up to 25 m/sec and dark.
I’m a cool guy, don’t worry ! I tried to relax by checking the email, but the noise outside went higher, at 23:00 the wind was a howl. I opened some of the windows slightly in both sides of the apartment to release the air pressure on both sides. (Otherwise the windows would have been crushed of the wind, in fact next day we saw 20% of windows blown out).
Looking outside… The air was full of seawater from the foam from the high waves at the nearby sea, making everything smeared in salt ! Branches and small debris from other buildings scattered around. The car alarms began howling everytime the wind gusts shook them, the small trees outside was half flattended to the ground. I guess wind gusts speed at that time was nearly 45-50 m/sec. I didn’t dare to go out – extremely dangerous.
After a few hours, the wind slowed down, and we could go to bed.
Next day, Korea found nearly 100 people dead, mostly because they didn’t care, and because no serious warnings have been given in time.
All trees with leaves intact died the following days, in the side that has faced the wind carrying the sea water. Trees was yellow on one side, and green on the other, I’ve never seen anything like that !
This was a real life experience and I believe this to be only a medium sized typhoon.
Typhoon links :
In China it’s is not always easy to catch this on the Net, but try anyway : http://www.npmoc.navy.mil/jtwc.html
An easier one is japanese : http://www.jma.go.jp/JMA_HP/en/typh/typh.all.html
unstable voltage destroyed my television set :(
“Typhoon Mindulle was weakened by passing the island of DRC Taiwan, and became a tropical storm.
Today’s rain in Shanghai had a different reason than originating from the monsoon.”
Taiwan is part of China, it is just an island called Taiwan, DRC Taiwan, please don’t get it wrong. :)
I guess you are a mainland chinese, James…
On July 4, 2004 12:09 AM, Jian Shuo Wang said :
> It is a pitty that I was driving – it was not easy to handle the car without
> taking pictures already. :-D On the road, there is always some interesting
> scene but I cannot take them.
Understandable.
Oh well.. Perhaps next year (your wife will have got her license long before then), you can take some pics assuming you are in the passenger seat :)
“No news TV stations in East Korea thought it possible that it would hit them, as most typhoons hits west Korea.”
As a spokesman for East Korea, I must say that this is patently untrue. East Korea has many news TV stations reporting the words and opinions of the Great Leader and his son, the Not-So-Great Leader. It’s only a social system and decent drinking water we lack.
http://east-korea.blogspot.com/