Eastern Taiwan

Eastern Taiwan faces the Pacific Ocean directly, separated from the Philippine Sea and the Western Pacific by no significant shelf or island barrier. The Central Mountain Range runs the length of the island and drops steeply into the sea along this coast — the Qingshui Cliffs (Qingshui Duanya) north of Hualien are one of the world's more dramatic examples of a mountain range meeting open ocean, with cliff faces of 1,000 to 2,000 m descending almost without foothills to the waterline. The tidal regime on the east coast is semidiurnal, driven directly by the Pacific tidal wave. Spring range at Hualien runs approximately 2.0 to 2.5 m — a moderate, well-behaved semidiurnal signal. Two near-equal highs and two near-equal lows each day, consistent through the year with the usual spring-neap variation around the lunar cycle. The eastern coast is exposed to Pacific typhoon tracks. The peak typhoon season runs from July through October; systems track across the Western Pacific and make landfall or pass close to eastern Taiwan several times per decade, producing surge, extreme waves, and flooding that overwhelm the astronomical tide entirely. The Suhua Highway (Su-Hua Highway), cut into the Qingshui Cliffs, is subject to rock-fall and closure after typhoons and significant rainfall events. The offshore islands — Green Island (Lyudao) and Orchid Island (Lyuciou/Lanyu) — sit in the path of the Kuroshio Current, the Pacific's western boundary current equivalent to the Gulf Stream, which runs northward along eastern Taiwan at 1 to 2 knots. The Taiwan Central Weather Bureau (CWB) publishes authoritative tide predictions for Taiwan ports, including Hualien and Taitung, and issues typhoon and marine warnings. The CWB tide tables are publicly accessible and should be the reference for any activity where timing matters on the east coast.