Every summer and fall, giant spinning storms called typhoons form over the warm seas. Each year, about 3 or 4 of them come close to Taiwan.
This is Mei. And that's Swoop, a little weather jet that chases typhoons! Let's find out how a typhoon works, and how to stay safe.
👆 Tap the glowing circles. Tap 📖 Read to me to hear the story. Press Next ▶ to keep reading, or jump straight to the game.
A typhoon is born over a warm, warm ocean. The sun heats the sea until the water is warmer than about 26°C, like a warm swimming pool.
Warm, wet air rises up and makes tall clouds. More air rushes in to fill the gap, and the clouds start to spin. 👆 Warm the sea and watch!
🌊 About 26 typhoons are born over the Pacific Ocean near Asia every year. Most come in July, August and September. August has the most!Look at a typhoon from high above. Its winds spin around the middle, counterclockwise: the opposite way from a clock's hands.
The Earth turns, and that gives the winds a little sideways push. On the other side of the equator, the push goes the other way, so storms there spin clockwise! 👆 Try both.
📛 Every typhoon gets a name from a list of 140 names, shared by 14 countries and places around the Pacific. Some are flowers, animals and stars!
In the very middle of a typhoon is the eye. Inside the eye, the wind is calm, and you can even see blue sky!
Right around the eye is the eyewall, a ring of giant clouds. That's where the wind blows the strongest. Farther out, the wind gets weaker. 👆 Slide the wind meter.
👁️ A typhoon's eye is about 45 km wide, on average. Small eyes are 10 to 20 km wide, and big ones can be 100 km or more!Typhoons are huge! The windy part of an average typhoon reaches 200 to 300 km out from the middle. A big one can reach 400 to 500 km.
Taiwan is about 394 km long. So one big typhoon can cover the whole island at once! 👆 Compare the sizes.
💨 Weather forecasters sort typhoons by their strongest wind. Light: 62 to 117 km/h. Medium: 118 to 183 km/h. Strong: 184 km/h or more. That's faster than a car on the highway!Where will the typhoon go? It moves like a spinning top drifting across the floor. Over the Pacific Ocean sits a giant area of heavy, sinking air called the Pacific High.
A typhoon can't push through the High. It slides around its edge, like water flowing around a hill. When the High stretches west, the typhoon heads west. When the High pulls back, the typhoon turns north. 👆 Try it!
🚲 Young typhoons move about 10 to 25 km an hour, about as fast as you can ride a bike. After they turn north, they can speed up to 50 km an hour.
Far out at sea, there are no weather stations. So to see where a typhoon will go, Taiwan sends a jet to chase the wind! It flies around the typhoon about 13,000 meters up. That's as high as 25 Taipei 101s!
The jet drops dropsondes: little tubes on parachutes. As they fall, they measure the wind, the warmth and the wetness of the air, and radio it all to the forecasters. 👆 Drop some!
🇹🇼 Taiwan's typhoon-chasing flights started in 2003. By September 2026 they had flown 91 times around 75 typhoons and dropped 1,356 dropsondes. The extra data makes 3-day path forecasts about 6% more accurate.
When a typhoon's strong winds might reach the seas near Taiwan within about 24 hours, the weather service sends out a sea warning. About 18 hours before they might reach land, a land warning comes. Time to get ready!
Mei's family brings things inside, so the wind can't blow them away. They get a flashlight, water and food, just in case the power goes out. 👆 Help them get ready.
🏠 Grown-ups also check if their home is in a low place that might flood, and they listen to the news from the weather service, not rumors.
When the typhoon arrives, the wind howls and the rain pounds on the windows. The safest place to be is inside.
Sometimes the power goes out. That's what the flashlight is for! Mei's family plays games by lantern light. 👆 Turn off the lights and move the flashlight.
🏫 In Taiwan, when a strong typhoon is coming, city and county governments can announce a typhoon day: no school, and many grown-ups stay home from work, so everyone stays safe.
Whoa! Suddenly the wind stops, and Mei can see blue sky. Is the typhoon over?
No! The eye is passing over the city. In about 20 to 30 minutes, the eyewall arrives and the wind comes back, blowing from the other side. So we stay inside until the grown-ups say the typhoon has gone. 👆 What should Mei do?
🧭 An old Taiwanese saying: when the wind turns around to blow from the south, the typhoon is leaving.
Taiwan has more than 260 mountains taller than 3,000 meters! The tallest, Yushan, is 3,952 meters high.
When a typhoon crashes into these tall mountains, the bottom of the storm gets broken up, and the typhoon gets weaker. Places behind the mountains, like Taichung, often get less wind. 👆 Compare the two sides.
⛰️ But the mountains also push the wet air up, so the slopes can get huge amounts of rain. Sometimes a brand-new typhoon center even forms on the other side of the mountains!
The next day, the sun comes out. Mei helps Grandpa sweep the leaves off the drain, so the rain water can flow away.
Typhoons can be dangerous, but their rain also fills Taiwan's reservoirs, the big lakes that give us water. In winter, central and southern Taiwan get very little rain, so the water saved from typhoons helps a lot! 👆 Tap around.
🍂 In October and November, a typhoon can team up with the cold northeast monsoon wind from the north. Together they can bring days of rain to northern and northeastern Taiwan.A typhoon is a giant spinning storm born over a warm sea. It has a calm eye and super strong winds in the eyewall. Weather jets help forecasters see where it will go, and getting ready early keeps everyone safe.
🧠 Quick Quiz!