Didn't notice anything in the news article where CWB explained how they managed to miss warning everyone of a potentially deadly downpour in Ilan.

From http://bit.ly/IX7Cx5:

"Downpours close 2 sections of Suao-Hualien Highway The China Post news staff--Two sections of the Suao-Hualien Highway were closed to traffic yesterday after torrential rains in eastern Taiwan induced sporadic minor landslides.

As a precautionary measure, authorities closed the Suao-Tungao Section of the Suao-Hualien Highway at 4 p.m. and then the Chungteh-Suao Section at 7 p.m. The two sections may be re-opened this morning, circumstances permitting, according to highway maintenance officials.

In Yilan County, Suao Township reported more than 226 mm of rain yesterday and swelling rivers prompted the township administrative office to open a rain shelter for local residents.

Suao was the wettest spot in the country yesterday, with a local observatory reporting an accumulated 372.5 mm of rainfall as of 7:20 p.m.

Humid easterly winds and a well developed convectional cloud system were to blame for the downpour in eastern Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said in a weather report yesterday.

Yilan's special terrain also played a role, the CWB said, adding further torrential rains were expected in both Yilan and Hualien Counties well into the night."

You're right, the ocean has been very calm, and I had the same question with regards to why so much seaweed should appear under such calm conditions. The jumu was often entangled in the seaweed, suggesting that it had not been floating, but perhaps it simply got caught in the seaweed on its trip in. Still, there was a disproportional amount of jumu in the seaweed compared to other driftwood, again suggesting that it was not floating.

I often find jumu at the mid-tide line. It rarely washes up to the reaches of a high tide.

I also noticed a lot of, or at least more than usual, sponge over the last few days. Sponge in this area is actually fairly rare, but there was quite a bit on the beach on Monday.

This makes me wonder if perhaps a lot of lanbao has perhaps appeared recently.

Then the other day i was driving along 11 and a couple of times i thought i did actually get a good strong whiff of the sea. I was surprised, and even doubted it, but your post about the seaweed explains it. Was it seaweed or kelp?

Whatever, i wonder why it suddenly appeared - there weren't particularly big seas recently - and what's the connection with jumu? Does that kind of wood actually float? Some woods don't. I know jumu is hard and heavy. Maybe it is being 'upwelled' from the bottom along with the seaweed in one of these underwater typhoons.

Check out this ocean imaging video on the global currents - looks like a moving van gogh painting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0B1xYBRQ3qE

Some more info:

"The ancient Greeks and Romans used it for medicinal purposes; the Greeks believed it was a cure-all for nearly every ailment. In France in the 1600s, King Louis XIV ordered greenhouses built for it to suit his lover’s belief that it improved his prowess behind closed doors."

Read more: http://www.grit.com/garden/vegetables/how-to-grow-asparagus.aspx#ixzz1uEi0evMR

Packed with minerals and vitamins, asparagus is high in fiber and low in carbohydrates. It is also a rich source of folic acid which is important in blood cell formation, and the prevention of liver disease and some birth defects. The National Cancer Institute found asparagus to be the no. 1 food source of glutathione, a potent cancer-fighting agent.

He did recently cut them back quite a bit. I saw a lot of asparagus on the compost pile. I'll attach some pics.

Notice the irrigation he's installed.

As such, the Taiwanese farmer invented a system of allowing 3 or 4 of the main fern fronds to keep growing while cutting back the rest. The asparagus will then shoot up around these 'mother stalks'. This allows for a much longer harvest period - supposedly.

It takes about two years from planting before you can really start to harvest - so there is a bit of patience involved - sorely tested at the beginning when the chickens got in and had a ball digging up my freshly mulched and planted beds of asparagus seedlings.

Meant to be planted 30 cm apart, but not sure on the rows, read somehwere that it was 1.5 metres but thought that sounded a bit excessive.

Weeding is important.

My local nursery guy said they need a lot of water, but he was probably referring to summer - elsewhere they say they don't need a lot of water - in fact, too much can kill them.

So far as nutrients go, they are said to like potassium, which can be provided from banana peels.

Although apsaruagus have been recorded to grow up to 100 years old, their productive lifespan is normally 10-15 years, but only about half that in the tropics - double the production but only half the life - the Jimmy Hendrix of asparagus.

They were were first recorded in Egyptian artwork in 4000BC!

You mentioned that neighbour of yours was growing asparagus - is he/she is using this famous Taiwan mother stalk method?

"They form and dissipate along fronts and move across the ocean. At the ocean surface eddies may manifest as swirling areas of high or low temperature or salinity, or elevated or depressed water levels."

"The sea level will rise if the density of the water decreases and fall if it increases. Changes in density occur in response to changes in ocean temperature and salinity. As water gets cooler or more salty it becomes denser and contracts. As it gets warmer or less salty it becomes less dense and expands"
http://www.pacificstormsclimatology.org/index.php?page=glossary

It seems that eddies may cause an upwelling of cold water which thus affects the water temperature which in turn would cause a contraction in the water thus resulting in lower tides - or vice verca for anti-cyclone eddies.

I do seem to remember that the time that you reported this extreme low tide was not during a full moon - which is the time of spring tides - so the eddy is a more likely explanation.

So my guess is that the driftwood disappeared due to an underwater cyclone - but normal transmission should be resumed at some point. Actually, the driftwood is actually on a continual giant loop around the Pacific ocean - occasionally disrupted by these eddies.

What you describe could very well explain the sudden disappearance of this particular driftwood. At the same time, if currents are the cause, I would assume the wood is washing up on some other shore, or perhaps it will just get bounced around for a few months until it makes its way back here.

The question remains whether the daily appearance of this wood was the norm interrupted by an anomaly or vice versa. I haven't lived here long enough to know, but it's something I plan on finding out.

One thing that I did notice at the same time the wood disappeared was that there were some extraordinary tides. And something was going on with the currents because entire beaches would be altered in a big way from one day to the next. Sandbars would be replaced by 6-8" rocks, and whole areas of beach that were normally sand would be completely covered in rock only to return to sand the next day. This was happening daily as of last weekend. I'll be spending more time at the beach over the next three days so it will be interesting to see what's going on.

The fishermen would know what's up.

Basically, there is one main one, known as the Black Tide in Taiwan (hei chao, or the Kuroshio current. It's one of the world's major ocean systems (called gyres) and travels in a circular path - we being on the western boundary of it. The direction is always flowing to the north past Taiwan.

However, there are these things called 'eddies' which are supposedly like the 'storms of the ocean'.
They seem to be quite large - several hundred km's across, and apparently can hold their form for several months and have a significant impact on the biology of the area they are affecting.

As for the driftwood - they could possibly explain why there was a period where more seemed to be washing up.
Of course the change in the monsoon direction would seem to be a pretty plausible explanation too.

Additionally, from the literature, there seems to be some interaction with ppe sea current which i don't quite understand, but it supposedly injects into the black tide during the south west monsoon. This interaction is also a contribuiting factor to the formation of eddies.