After the storm

Aere's cleared out by now, but it left a real mess. Looks like every tree has been trimmed and all the branches and leaf clippings blasted about with a fire hose. Walking around, I saw dozens of trees that were blown down and many many trees with big branches torn off. The branches themselves were often the size of mid-sized trees. One tree in Da'an with a 30-cm trunk was snapped in half rather than uprooted. Most of the mess was from trees, but there were also some torn-down and smashed-up signs and corrugated plastic air conditioner awnings. Abandoned inside-out umbrellas topped it all off.

The winds for all this were pretty strong—140 km/h steady and 180 km/h gusts. The wind really makes the typhoon. The wind knocked down practically every bicycle I saw and even some rows of scooters.

The rain was consistant for three days, but not as heavy as other, normal storms. Everything looks sopped, but there was no flooding around here. The news carried video of lots of other places weren't so lucky. There were some deaths in a mudslide and in some lost fishing ships.