Central Taiwan Geography & Climate

Central Taiwan contains the highest and most rugged ground on the island, where the Central Mountain Range reaches its greatest elevations before dropping west to the coastal plain.

The high mountains

Yushan — Jade Mountain — rises to 3,952 metres, making it the highest point in Taiwan and the highest in north-east Asia, taller than Mount Fuji. More than two hundred peaks on the island exceed 3,000 metres, and most of them are here. The ranges run north to south and are extremely steep, the product of the Philippine Sea plate driving into the Eurasian at several centimetres a year — the island is still rising.

Sun Moon Lake

Taiwan’s largest natural lake, at about 750 metres, enlarged by a Japanese-era hydroelectric dam in the 1930s. It takes its name from the shape of its two halves, divided by Lalu island, which is sacred to the Thao.

The western plain

West of the mountains, alluvial fans built by rivers flowing off them create the flat, fertile Changhua and Yunlin plains, historically the island’s rice bowl and now intensively farmed.

Unstable ground

The 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, magnitude 7.7 and centred in Nantou, killed more than two thousand people and reshaped valleys; its fault scarp is preserved at a museum built over a collapsed school running track. Typhoon rainfall on steep, fractured slopes produces frequent and large landslides.

The Tropic of Cancer

It crosses the island near Chiayi, marked by a monument, and central Taiwan straddles the line between tropical and subtropical.

Central Taiwan spans the widest climatic range on the island, from subtropical plain to genuinely alpine summits, over a horizontal distance of well under a hundred kilometres.

The plain

Taichung has the best weather in Taiwan and knows it: sheltered from the north-east monsoon by the mountains, it stays sunny and dry through the winter when Taipei is grey and drizzling, with highs around 22°C in January. Summers are hot, 32 to 34°C, but less oppressive than the capital’s.

Altitude

Temperature falls by roughly six degrees per thousand metres. Sun Moon Lake at 750 metres is a few degrees cooler than Taichung and pleasant year round. Alishan at 2,200 metres averages around 10°C and needs a jacket in any season. Yushan’s summit drops well below freezing in winter and holds snow, and the observatory there records the island’s lowest temperatures.

Rain

The plum rains in May and June bring weeks of humid grey drizzle. The typhoon season from July to October delivers the heaviest rainfall, and the mountains wring extraordinary totals out of a passing storm — single-event records here are among the highest measured anywhere.

The sea of cloud

Alishan’s famous cloud sea forms when moist air rises from the valleys and settles below the ridgeline, most reliably from autumn to spring on clear mornings. It is a weather phenomenon rather than a guarantee.

Why Taichung is the exception

The mountains that make the rest of the region difficult are exactly what give Taichung the best weather on the island. The Central Range blocks the north-east monsoon that keeps Taipei grey from December to February, so while the capital drizzles, Taichung sits in sunshine at a comfortable 22°C. Taiwanese move here partly for that, and a winter trip that would be disappointing in the north is reliably good here.

Landslides

Steep slopes, fractured rock from the 1999 earthquake and intense rainfall combine to close mountain roads regularly.