New Taipei City
New Taipei City Geography & Climate
Geography
New Taipei City surrounds the capital completely, covering about 2,050 square kilometres from the sea to the mountains.
The basin rim
Taipei sits in a basin, and New Taipei is everything around and above it: the flat land at the basin’s edge, where the dense commuter districts are, and then the hills. Around two-thirds of the municipality is mountain and forest, rising to over 1,100 metres in the south.
The Tamsui river
Formed where the Xindian and Dahan rivers join, it runs north-west through the basin to the sea at Tamsui. It was the route by which the whole region was settled and traded, and the port at its mouth was northern Taiwan’s main harbour until silting and the railway ended that.
Volcanic north
The Datun volcano group at the northern edge is dormant but geothermally active, which is the source of the hot springs at Beitou and along the coast, and of the sulphur vents that were mined here from the seventeenth century.
The eroded coast
The north-east shore is sandstone tilted into the sea and worked by wind, salt spray and waves into honeycombs, mushroom rocks and hoodoos — most spectacularly at Yehliu, where the softer rock has worn away beneath harder concretions.
Water for the capital
The Feitsui reservoir on the Beishi river, in the mountains above Xindian, supplies almost all of Taipei’s drinking water, and its catchment is closed to development and largely to visitors. It is why the southern districts of New Taipei are so thinly populated despite being close to the capital, and why the forest there is intact.
Earthquakes and typhoons
Taiwan sits on a plate boundary and in the western Pacific typhoon track; both are routine facts of life.
Climate Patterns
Northern Taiwan has a humid subtropical climate, and the defining characteristic is moisture rather than temperature.
Summer
June to September is hot and extremely humid, with highs of 33 to 35°C, nights above 26°C, and daily afternoon thunderstorms. The urban districts are hotter than the mountains by several degrees.
Winter
December to February is mild but grey and damp: 14 to 19°C, with weeks of drizzle driven by the north-east monsoon, which hits this coast directly. It rarely feels cold in absolute terms and frequently feels miserable, and this is when the hot springs come into their own.
Rain
Around 2,000 to 3,000 millimetres a year depending on elevation, with rain in every month. The mountains behind Jiufen are among the wettest inhabited places in Taiwan, and Jiufen itself is famously often in cloud.
Typhoons
July to October, with several affecting the island each year. A direct hit closes transport, shuts the mountain roads and can cause landslides; warnings are issued days ahead and a typhoon day closes offices and schools.
The north-east monsoon
From October to March a cold, wet airstream comes down off the Asian mainland and hits this coast head-on, which is why northern Taiwan has a grey winter while the south of the island stays sunny and dry. Jiufen and the coastal hills take the worst of it, and locals treat a clear winter day there as a piece of luck.
Best conditions
October to December, when the humidity drops, the typhoon season ends and the skies clear. Late autumn is also when the mountain trails are most comfortable and the coast is at its calmest, which makes it the obvious window for anyone whose main reason for coming is the landscape rather than the city.