Northern Taiwan
Northern Taiwan Geography & Climate
Geography
Northern Taiwan is the island’s widest and most populous end, where the Central Mountain Range drops toward the sea and leaves room for basins and plains.
The Taipei basin
Taipei sits in a flat basin about twenty kilometres across, drained by the Tamsui river and its tributaries and enclosed by hills on every side. That enclosure is the defining fact of the city’s climate — it traps summer heat and winter damp alike — and it is also why the metropolitan area is so densely built, with nowhere flat to expand into.
Volcanoes
Yangmingshan is part of the Tatun volcano group, dormant rather than extinct, and it still vents. Sulphur fumaroles, boiling springs and the smell of hydrogen sulphide are present within the city limits at Beitou, and the whole north coast is geothermally active.
The coast
A rugged shoreline of headlands and small bays, with sandstone at Yehliu eroded by wind and salt into mushroom rocks, honeycombs and the much-photographed Queen’s Head. Keelung is the natural deep harbour and the island’s northern port.
Yilan
East of the mountains, the Lanyang plain is a triangular alluvial fan opening to the Pacific, historically isolated until tunnels and the Xueshan highway connected it to Taipei in 2006.
Gold and coal
The hills between Ruifang and the sea hold the mineral wealth that built Jiufen and Jinguashi. Gold was mined here from the 1890s, intensively under Japanese administration, and coal was worked through the Pingxi valley — which is why a branch railway runs up it at all. Both industries closed in the 1970s and 1980s, and the towns that survived did so by turning the abandoned workings and the steep lanes into something visitors wanted to see.
Earthquakes and typhoons
Taiwan sits where the Philippine Sea plate meets the Eurasian, so earthquakes are frequent, and the north-east coast takes the brunt of typhoons arriving from the Pacific.
Climate Patterns
Northern Taiwan has a humid subtropical climate, and the Taipei basin’s enclosure by hills makes both ends of the year more extreme than the numbers alone suggest.
Summer
June to September is hot and very humid, with highs of 33 to 36°C and overnight lows barely below 27°C. The basin traps heat and Taipei regularly records the island’s highest temperatures. Afternoon thunderstorms are frequent, and the humidity rather than the temperature is what visitors find hard.
Typhoons
The season runs roughly July to October and peaks in August and September. Taiwan is among the most typhoon-exposed places on earth, and the north-east coast takes storms arriving from the Pacific. A typhoon day means closed offices, suspended trains and cancelled flights, and the warnings are well publicised and worth heeding.
Winter
December to February is cool rather than cold, around 14 to 19°C, but the north-east monsoon brings persistent grey drizzle to Taipei, Keelung and the north coast that can last for weeks. Keelung is one of the rainiest cities in the world by days of rain. This is why hot springs are a winter activity here.
Spring and autumn
March to May is mild with plum rains in May; October and November are the best months of the year — warm, drier and clear.
The plum rains
Between roughly mid-May and mid-June a stationary front settles over the island and brings the meiyu, the plum rains — weeks of grey, humid, persistent drizzle named for the season when plums ripen. It is not dramatic but it is relentless, and it accounts for a large share of the annual rainfall. May is consequently a poorer month to visit than the calendar suggests.
Earthquakes
Tremors are frequent and usually minor. Buildings are engineered for them, and Taipei 101 has a visible tuned mass damper you can go and look at.