A lot of torrential rain and floods happen to the natural environment with the geographical position, climatic condition and terrains of Taiwan. As the rolling rain and floods stay and go, Taibei basin took shape as the sand and soil silting up. In this way, all kinds of plains also came into being, including Lanyang, Taizhong, Zhangyun, Jianan, Gaoxiong, Pingdong and so on.
Theses fertile lands kept by the sufficient rain are not only what the aborigines once lived on, but also what those ancestors meet in nature as the exploration and cultivation went on. It was their hardworking for three or four hundred years that Taiwan was built on!
To put it in another way, there would not be a prosperous Taiwan without torrential rain and floods.
Though torrential rain and floods facilitated the civilization in Taiwan, huge losses on human’s lives and property still follow them. As when the rain and floods take place, water currents are rapid, waves are furious, mountains fall and rivers overflowed.
According to the statistics, during the 30 years from 1961-1991, the annual cost of inundation in Taiwan is up to 14.2 billion Taiwan dollars, taking up 0.68% of the GDP. In order to avoid the flood disasters and cease the citizens with the aim to storage and utilize the floods to the benefits of people, studies on the phenomenon of torrential rain and floods are necessary. Only in this way, can people figure out plans on the effective countermeasures against the torrential rain.
In 1624, there were some Chinese moving to Taiwan before the Dutch occupied it. But little records were written down about torrential rain and typhoon until Taiwan came back under the jurisdiction of Qing Dynasty.
Modern hydrological instruments had not been invented to measure the scale of torrential rain and floods during Qing Dynasty, but the records about the date and extent of significant torrential rain and floods can be found in various historical documents. Some notes are about the depth of the inundated water as well. If only the period between 1683 to 1895 is taken into account, as Taiwan belonged to Qing Dynasty during these 213 years, there were 220 times of disasters caused by wind and water, 1.03 times each year on average.
During the 49 years from 1896 to 1945, typhoon struck Taiwan 178 times in total, 3.36 times each year on average. But disasters don’t happen every time.
The frequency of floods reached its highest point during the period from 1912-1941, which averaged 3.63 times per year nearly corresponding to what it was at the end of Qing Dynasty. From 1945 to 2002, Taiwan got struck by typhoon 243 times in all, as the annual average is 4.26 times. Among this, typhoon hit Taiwan the most frequently both in 1991 and 2001, 8 times per year. The yearly number of times of typhoon reached 7 three times and 6 three times as well.
Due to the increasing population and the enlargement in the area of development and utilization, more floods were caused by torrential rain.
From 1948 to 2000, 37 floods in Taiwan were out of torrential rain. such as the flood began on Aug. 7th in 1959.There were totally 183 times of floods during these years, 4.25 times per year on average. There were 9 floods in 2000, 8 in both 1990 and 1994. For 5 years, floods happened 7 times every year, all of which were after 1981.
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