Live cameras in Yilan, Taiwan

Yilan City is the seat of Yilan County in northeastern Taiwan, set on the flat, farm-rich Lanyang Plain just north of the Lanyang River. It is a compact place of about 95,000 people, with rice fields, canals and mountain views at its edges and the Pacific a short ride east. The plain was once the home of the indigenous Kavalan people, whose name lives on in the county’s older names and in a well-known local whisky.

The cameras tied to Yilan, more than 220 in all, come from Taiwan’s government highway CCTV feeds, collected from the Freeway Bureau and the Highway Bureau. The busiest corridor is National Freeway 5, which opened in 2006 and drives through the 12.9-kilometer Hsuehshan Tunnel under the mountains from Taipei before running down the plain past Toucheng and Yilan City to Su’ao. Provincial Highway 9 links Yilan to Taipei over the winding Bei-Yi Highway through Pinglin, and Provincial Highway 2 hugs the coast. Each camera sends a fresh still image every so often, so the view is close to current but not live video.

Yilan keeps UTC+8 like the rest of Taiwan. The tunnel cameras tell a weekly story: Friday evenings and Saturday mornings show traffic heading out of Taipei, and Sunday afternoons show the long return. From autumn through early spring the northeast monsoon pushes moist air against the mountains, so gray skies and steady rain are common, while summer brings heat, storms and the chance of typhoons.

• Weekend tunnel traffic toward and from Taipei
• Monsoon rain and mist on the plain in winter
• Summer sunsets behind the Snow Mountain range

Other sights in the radius include the Jiaoxi hot springs town, Luodong and its night market, and the Toucheng shore facing Guishan Island, Taiwan’s active volcanic island. Each summer the county also hosts the Yilan International Children’s Folklore and Folkgame Festival.

Sources: Yilan City - Wikipedia · Yilan County, Taiwan - Wikipedia · National Freeway 5 - Wikipedia · Provincial Highway 9 (Taiwan) - Wikipedia.