Southern Taiwan Geography & Climate

Southern Taiwan runs from the Chiayi plain down to the island’s southern cape, taking in the widest lowland on the island and its warmest coast.

The plain

The Chianan plain is Taiwan’s largest area of flat, fertile ground, built by rivers coming off the Central Range and irrigated on a massive scale by the Chianan canal system engineered in the 1920s, which turned marginal land into the island’s rice bowl.

The Tropic of Cancer

It crosses just north of Chiayi, so almost all of this region lies within the tropics — the only part of Taiwan that does. The vegetation, the crops and the winter weather all reflect it.

Kaohsiung harbour

A natural deep-water lagoon sheltered behind the long sandbar of Cijin island, which is why it became Taiwan’s principal port and one of the busiest container terminals in the world.

The Hengchun peninsula

At the southern tip, the mountains run right down to the sea. This is uplifted coral limestone rather than the sandstone and slate of the rest of the island, and the coast at Kenting has fringing reef, sea caves and the strange eroded formations at Maobitou. Eluanbi is the southernmost point of Taiwan proper.

Land that keeps arriving

The southern coastline has moved a long way in historical time. Fort Zeelandia at Anping was built on a sandbar island in a wide lagoon in 1624; that lagoon has since silted up entirely, and the fort now stands well inland with a town around it. The rivers coming off the mountains carry an enormous sediment load, and the plain they are building is still growing seaward in places even as other stretches erode.

Mud volcanoes and salt

The hills inland from Kaohsiung have small mud volcanoes, and the flat coast at Cigu holds historic salt pans now used by migrating black-faced spoonbills.

Southern Taiwan has a tropical monsoon climate — the only genuinely tropical part of the island — and it has a marked wet and dry season rather than the year-round dampness of the north.

The dry season

November to April is warm, sunny and dry, around 24 to 28°C by day, with very little rain. Because the Central Mountain Range blocks the north-east monsoon that keeps Taipei grey, this is the sunniest part of Taiwan in winter, and it is why Taiwanese head south from December to February.

The wet season

May to October brings the south-west monsoon and almost all the annual rainfall — a sharp contrast with the north, where rain is spread through the year. Afternoon thunderstorms are heavy, and the hills inland can record extreme totals.

Typhoons

The season runs July to October. The south is hit less often than the east coast but suffers badly when it is, because rain falling on the mountains drains across a flat, densely populated plain — the flooding of 2009 after Typhoon Morakot killed hundreds in the southern hills.

Heat

Summer highs of 32 to 34°C with high humidity, and Kaohsiung’s urban heat makes it feel worse. April to October needs the same precautions as any tropical city.

Kenting’s wind

From October to March the luoshanfeng, a fierce dry downslope wind, blows across the Hengchun peninsula, which is why the trees there lean and why the area is good for kitesurfing and poor for a quiet beach day.