When to Visit Taiwan: Typhoon Season by the Numbers (2026)

Most English guides about Taiwan will tell you “summer is typhoon season, avoid July to September.” That’s technically true and practically useless — it writes off a quarter of the year without telling you what the actual risk looks like.

I’m Taiwanese. I live here, and typhoon days are just part of the calendar for us. So instead of vague advice, here’s the official 114-year record — and one thing about how Taiwan handles typhoons that I’ve never seen explained properly in English.

Quick heads-up on what’s in here — and what isn’t

The statistics below come from Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration (CWA) official typhoon publication, covering 1911–2024. The rules about work and school suspension come from the actual regulation text. I’ve linked both at the bottom.

⚠️ But I want to be straight with you about a gap: I also wanted to give you monthly temperature, rainfall and humidity averages, and the dates of the plum rain season (梅雨). I couldn’t get those from an official source I trusted enough to publish. So they’re not here. I’d rather leave a hole than fill it with numbers I found on some other blog that also copied them from somewhere.

The actual numbers: which months get hit

Over 114 years, 378 typhoons struck Taiwan — the CWA counts a “strike” as one whose centre made landfall, or that passed close offshore and caused damage on land.

Here’s how they fall across the year:

Month	Strikes (1911–2024)	Average per year
January	0	0
February	0	0
March	0	0
April	1	0.01
May	9	0.08
June	25	0.22
July	98	0.86
August	108	0.95
September	91	0.80
October	33	0.29
November	12	0.11
December	1	0.01

Three things jump out:

August is the worst month, not July. Slightly, but consistently — and it averages almost exactly one strike per year.

The drop-off after September is steep. October has a third of September’s count. By November you’re at 12 strikes in 114 years.

🔴 January, February and March have never recorded a single strike. Not “rarely” — zero, across 114 years. If typhoon risk is your only scheduling constraint, that’s your window.

But averages lie — here’s the spread

“3 to 4 per year” is the correct average. It’s also misleading, because the year-to-year variation is big.

Counting how many years had each number of strikes:

• 0 strikes: 2 years
• 1 strike: 15 years
• 2 strikes: 15 years
• 3 strikes: 37 years ← most common
• 4 strikes: 18 years
• 5 strikes: 16 years
• 6 strikes: 7 years
• 7 strikes: 4 years ← maximum on record

So three is the typical year. But four separate years had seven, and two years had none at all. Don’t plan as if the average is a promise.

🔴 The part no English guide explains: typhoon days are declared city by city

This is the thing that genuinely confuses visitors, and it’s worth understanding before you’re standing in a hotel lobby wondering if the trains are running.

Taiwan suspends work and school during severe weather. We call it 停班停課. But:

It is not a national decision. Under Taiwan’s natural-disaster suspension regulations, each municipality mayor or county/city magistrate declares it for their own jurisdiction — and can delegate further down to district and township heads.

So Taipei can be completely shut down while Kaohsiung has an ordinary working day.

If you’re moving between cities during a typhoon, there is no single “is Taiwan closed today” answer. You check each city separately.

What triggers it

The legal threshold is average wind force 7+, or gusts of force 10+. Rainfall thresholds exist too, but they’re set region by region — what floods Keelung isn’t what floods Taichung. There’s also a discretionary clause allowing suspension below threshold when local terrain makes transport or utilities unsafe.

⚠️ An important scope detail

That regulation legally covers government agencies and schools. Private businesses are not legally required to close.

That’s why you’ll see convenience stores open, and some restaurants and shops trading normally, on a declared typhoon day. The city being “closed” doesn’t mean everything is.

(I should be honest about the limit of my checking here: I verified the legal scope, but I did not systematically verify what department stores, museums, the HSR, TRA, MRT or airlines actually do on a given typhoon day. Those decisions belong to each operator — check their own announcements.)

Where to check, and when

The authoritative source is the DGPA (Directorate-General of Personnel Administration) — local governments report their decisions into it:

dgpa.gov.tw/typh/daily/nds.html

The announcement timing is regulated, which is handy:

Suspension for	Announced by
Full day / morning	Previous evening 7–10pm (media by 11pm)
Overnight deterioration	By 4:30am (media by 5am)
Afternoon / evening	By 10:30am (media by 11am)

So the ritual is: check around 10pm the night before. That’s when most of Taiwan finds out.

⚠️ One warning: spreading false suspension information is a criminal offence here (penalties run up to three years or a NT$1 million fine), and fake typhoon-day screenshots absolutely circulate on social media. Check the official page, not a forwarded image.

Services that keep running regardless: transport, police, fire, coast guard, medical, customs.

Where typhoons actually land

Of 193 recorded landfalls:

• Yilan → Hualien: 42 (most common)
• Hualien → Chenggong: 39
• Taitung → Hengchun: 33

🔴 And a striking one: no typhoon has ever made landfall on Taiwan’s northwest coast in the entire 114-year record.

That’s geography — storms come off the Pacific, and the Central Mountain Range takes the impact. It doesn’t mean Taipei escapes the weather (wind and rain don’t respect landfall points), but it does mean the east coast carries more direct risk.

Worth noting because the east coast is exactly where Hualien, Taitung and the east-coast scenic routes are.

When warnings get issued

• Sea warning: ~24 hours before the force-7 wind radius may come within 100km of Taiwan’s waters
• Land warning: ~18 hours before it may reach land, updated every 3 hours

The land warning is the one travellers should watch — that’s roughly your planning horizon.

So when should you actually go?

Purely on typhoon risk:

Window	Typhoon risk	Note
Dec–Mar	🟢 Effectively zero	114-year record: 1 strike total across Jan/Feb/Mar/Dec
Apr–May	🟢 Very low	10 strikes combined
Jun	🟡 Low but real	25 strikes
Jul–Sep	🔴 Peak	297 of 378 strikes — 79% of everything
Oct	🟡 Tailing off	33 strikes
Nov	🟢 Low	12 strikes

⚠️ But typhoons aren’t the only variable, and I don’t have verified numbers on the others (temperature, humidity, rainfall). Winter in northern Taiwan is genuinely damp and grey even without typhoons — I know that from living here, but I’m not going to attach numbers to it that I haven’t confirmed.

If you’re going in peak season anyway

Which is completely reasonable — 79% of strikes happen in that window, but that’s still only about 2.6 strikes across three months.

Practical hedges:

1. Book accommodation with free cancellation. During typhoon season the flexibility is worth the small premium.
2. Don’t schedule anything critical on your last day. Flight disruption cascades.
3. Keep a day of slack. If one day gets eaten, you haven’t lost the trip.
4. Have mobile data. You’ll be checking announcements the night before — see the note below.
5. Consider east-coast timing carefully. That’s where landfalls concentrate.

The 30-second version

• August is the peak month (108 strikes in 114 years), then July, then September
• Jan/Feb/Mar have never recorded a strike in the entire official record
• Average is 3–4 per year, but the range runs 0 to 7 — don’t treat the average as a promise
• 🔴 Typhoon days are declared city by city — Taipei closed doesn’t mean Kaohsiung closed
• Threshold: wind force 7+ or gusts force 10+; the rule covers government and schools, not private business
• Check DGPA around 10pm the night before
• The east coast takes the landfalls; the northwest coast never has

Next, sort these out

• Do you need a visa? — most Western visitors get 90 days; Canadian and British passports can extend to 180
• Getting around Taiwan without a car — how the transport network actually connects
• Is the High Speed Rail Pass worth it? — the break-even math
• SIM card or eSIM for Taiwan — you’ll want data to check announcements
• EasyCard explained — the first thing to buy when you land

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Sources (checked 2026-08-04): Central Weather Administration, Typhoon 100 Questions (颱風百問, published June 2025) — cwa.gov.tw, for all strike statistics, monthly distribution, landfall geography and warning criteria. Natural Disaster Work and School Suspension Operation Regulations (天然災害停止上班及上課作業辦法, law code S0110022, amended 2026-04-24) — law.moj.gov.tw, for suspension authority, thresholds and scope. Announcement timing from the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration — dgpa.gov.tw.

Statistics are historical and don’t predict any individual year. Regulations can be amended — confirm current rules before you rely on them. Not verified and deliberately omitted: monthly climate normals (temperature, rainfall, humidity), plum rain season dates, and operator-level closure behaviour for specific transport services and attractions.