Talim managed to make it to Super Typhoon size before hitting last night, so it came in bigger and sooner than expected. (I’m not sure how that compares to the hurricane scale.) Here in Taipei we were getting strong gusts of wind of strength similar to what we expect when the eye is passing near yesterday evening when the typhoon’s eye was still well offshore.
Fortunately for us in Taipei, the typhoon eye took a left turn to the south before coming ashore, so instead of going across just south of Taipei, it went across the island through central Taiwan, quite a ways south of us. Even so, we got quite a lot of wind up here. I haven’t been out yet since it is still windy, but from the windows I’ve seen: a) one of out screens got knocked off b) the sign for the car wash across the lane was knocked down and c) the metal chimney of a restaurant out on the main street had it’s top 2 meters knocked off which is now dangling.
On the news, other parts of Taipei are reporting some significant damage from downed trees, signs falling off buildings, windows blown out, and some heavily damaged buildings. In central Taiwan there’s a lot of flooding and roads washed out. So far the news is only reporting 1 death.
If I remember top windspeed it was somewhere in category 3 I thought. Drat. I should look it up….
(http://livejournal.com/users/paulownia)
Looks like Super Typhoon is 150mph or higher max sustained winds. Category 5 Hurricane starts at 155mph max sustained winds, so a Super Typhoon would be either a strong Category 4 or a Category 5 hurricane.
(http://livejournal.com/users/jlick)