Three typhoons take down Korea’s heat dome, usher in cooler mornings
Typhoons Dolphin, Peilou and Chan-hom have disrupted the pressure system behind Korea’s prolonged heat, bringing cooler mornings while leaving southern drought concerns unresolved.
Children pose for photos on the steps of the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on Aug. 10.NEWS1
The double heat dome that had held extreme heat over the Korean Peninsula has cracked, and the mornings are turning cool again.
Seoul's low on Monday was 24.8 degrees Celsius (76.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said Monday, a second straight morning below the tropical-night threshold. A tropical night is an overnight low of 25 degrees Celsius or higher. Daegwallyeong ridgein Gangwon fell to 17.6 degrees Celsius.
The relief does not reach the south, where a severe drought is still running, and what happens there now depends on three typhoons moving through the western Pacific.
Those same typhoons are the reason the heat broke. The North Pacific High and the Tibetan High had stacked over the peninsula in a double heat dome that held for weeks. As the three storms disturbed the pressure pattern around Korea, the dome gave way, and cold air from the northeast poured through the gap.
Morning lows are expected to keep falling, to between 19 and 25 degrees Celsius on Tuesday and between 17 and 24 degrees Celsius on Wednesday. Afternoons are another matter. Highs could reach 34 degrees Celsius in the west, including the greater Seoul area and Gyeonggi.
"Cold air is coming down, so temperatures overall are lower than last week and the weather is cool with low humidity," KMA forecaster Lee Won-gil said.
"During the day, the easterly wind crossing the mountains produces a warming effect, so the west will be hotter than the east."
An image from the Chollian-2A weather satellite shows three typhoons over the western Pacific and their projected paths.KOREA METEOROLOGICAL ADMINISTRATION
None of the three typhoons is expected to hit Korea directly. The moisture they leave behind is another question.
Typhoon Dolphin, the season's 13th, made landfall on the coast of eastern China on Sunday and has been tracking northwest overland since. It is expected to weaken into a tropical depression over the Chinese interior on Tuesday morning. Some of the moisture it sheds could drift into Korea.
Typhoon Peilou, the 16th, formed north of Guam on Sunday and is expected to track northeast through the middle of the week, away from Korea.
The 15th typhoon of the season, Chan-hom, has been moving west toward the peninsula and is expected to make landfall at Tokyo on Tuesday. It is then forecast to cross the Japanese archipelago and become an extratropical cyclone over the East Sea. Easterly winds could carry its moisture to Korea's east coast as rain.
Whether that rain does anything for the drought in the south is not yet clear.
"There is a possibility of rain in areas such as the Yeongdong region of Gangwon as the moisture the typhoon releases flows in," Lee said. "But depending on how the typhoon's strength changes as it passes over the Japanese archipelago, the area of rainfall could shift as well."
BY CHON KWON-PIL [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
