ALBERT

Description: Heavy rainfall occurred over the western side of Taiwan's complex terrain from August 10 to 13, 1994 after Typhoon Doug moved northward from the East China Sea into Taiwan and on towards the Yellow Sea. On August 10, most of the rainfall fell over sloped areas. The heaviest daily rainfall totals were in excess of 200 mm over southwestern as well as central Taiwan. However, not much rainfall occurred over northern Taiwan. The lack of rainfall over northern Taiwan also occurred on August 11, 12 and 13. The larger rainfall amounts shifted westward from the sloped areas on August 10 toward lower terrain on August 11. On August 12 and 13, most of the higher rainfall amounts were found over the coastal area in southwestern Taiwan. Notably, about 300 to 400 mm per day fell over the coastal area in southwest Taiwan on August 12 and 13. The distribution of rainfall amount was different on August 10 and 11 (termed as Case 1) compared to August 12 and 13 (termed as Case 2). The environmental situation and precipitation characteristics are analyzed using EC/TOGA data, ground-based radar data, surface rainfall patterns, surface wind data, and upper air soundings. Chen at al. (2001) also categorized the precipitation pattern into two types, propagating and quasi-stationary. For the propagating type of precipitation, rainrates increased or remained the same as systems went from the plains to mountainous regions. With the quasi-stationary type of precipitation, however, rainrates decreased as precipitation propagated across the plains and into the mountains. The focus of this study is to understand what causes the h1aher amounts of rainfall over Taiwan, and what factors influence where the higher amounts of rainfall will occur, over sloped areas or over coastal areas.