Relief as Typhoon Tembin skirts Taiwan

Taiwan's rain-battered south heaved a sigh of relief Tuesday after Typhoon Tembin skirted past the island before dawn without making landfall, apparently leaving little damage.

Communities in the exposed southern part of Taiwan had been bracing for a rare second onslaught after Tembin swept across the island late last week and unleashed the worst downpour in more than a century in some areas.

"I feel relieved now," said Yeh Ming-shun, head of Hengchun township, which forms the southernmost tip of Taiwan.

Tembin brushed by Taiwan at 2:00 am (1800 GMT Monday), missing the south of the island by 10 kilometres (six miles), the Central Weather Bureau said.

Hengchun, at the heart of Taiwan's Riviera, is normally a bustling city full of tourists, but Tuesday morning it was deserted, as almost all visitors had cancelled their hotel bookings.

Material damage appeared to be limited, and the area's farmers seemed to have escaped a devastating blow to their livelihoods, partly because they had already harvested a significant amount of the season's fruit and rice.

As of 0115 GMT, Tembin was 130 kilometres (80 miles) north-northeast of Orchid Island off the east coast of Taiwan, according to the Central Weather Bureau.

With a radius of 180 kilometres, the typhoon was packing gusts of up to 119 kilometres per hour and moving northeast at a speed of 22 kilometres per hour.

A second landfall by Tembin would have been a rare event. The weather bureau said Taiwan had been hit by the same typhoon twice only four times since 1977. The last typhoon to do so was Typhoon Nali in 2001.

When Tembin ground its way across Taiwan late last week, it triggered massive precipitation in some places, with Hengchun receiving more than 600 millimetres (24 inches) of rain within a 24-hour span.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/relief-typhoon-tembin-skirts-taiwan-031706087.html

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