Rain and cyclones and storms, oh my...

[Written on Wednesday 25th June]

Well. To use the phrase that Peter Kay pointed out as one of the idiosyncrasies of colloquial English: Packer and Pies sure seem to have brought the good weather with them. (Peter Kay didn’t use the Packer and Pies bit, obviously.)

The day we were actually in the air on our way here, powering through the sky, Hong Kong experienced some of the worst floods it has ever seen, with landslides, requisite sandbags and several areas measuring the highest levels of rainfall ever since records began 125 years ago.

Although it was sunny-ish for our first few days here, by our first weekend, it was coursing down in rivers along any street that is remotely un-flat again, which is most of them. Getting a cab home was a piece of cake that night!

And now, two and a half weeks in, “the No. 8 storm signal was issued last night for the first time this year as Severe Tropical Storm Fengshen blew in from the Philippines, where, as a typhoon, it killed more than 1,000 people.” [South China Morning Post, Weds 25 June 2008] Cue ridiculously strong winds (we’re talking horizontally-bent trees here), perpetually persistent torrential rain and cancelled public transport. And amen to that – the thought of going on that hydrofoil in this weather is making me rather nauseous and I’m on dry land and indoors!

I’ve truly never seen weather like it, except maybe on the news, when they’re talking about other countries; fortunately they seem to have given the apocalypse-esque climate some thought when planning their buildings – life seems to continue as normal apart from Colin being told not to come into the office because it’s closed. I guess having a typhoon season that lasts 3-4 months means there’s a whole semester devoted to it at Hong Kong architecture school. However, it’s not supposed to start until mid-July. My powers must be stronger than I thought…

Everyone seems pretty blasé about it though. The real estate agent said it was fine to go out in typhoon weather though “you might want to stay away from the water’s edge” – er, thanks for the not entirely unobvious advice, dude. They have a sort of gradual warning system which goes along the lines of:

1 = might get a touch blowy soon
3 = make sure you strap on a headscarf ladies, if you want to avoid the poodle look
8 = superglue at the ready, people; choose which one of your children you prefer
9 = batten down the hatches, and get under the dining room table
10 = make your peace with God, the end is nigh!

(For the actual definitions and advice, you can read about them on the HK Observatory’s website www.hko.gov.uk/informtc/tcsignal)

As I’m actually typing this up, two weeks later, I’m quite glad I didn’t check that website until now. Instructions such as “fit bars into positions & insert reinforced shutters & gates if available” and “now is the time to decide which rooms you will use to shelter if the windows on the exposed side of your home become broken” might have put the willies up me somewhat!

I never realised one teeny little country could have such extreme weather conditions throughout the year, and I did GCSE Geography! (Though maybe more attention could have been paid, I did only get a C…)

[A few days later…]

And yet another weather record gets broken within the first month of us being here. My good friend the South China Morning Post [Friday 27 June 2008] tells me “the city [Hong Kong] has just survived its wettest June ever”: apparently “from 1 June we have had 1,136.3mm [of rain].” Now I have to confess, I’m not very good with the old metric system, but that sounds like quite a lot. Yup, conversion tells me that’s 3 feet 9 inches, another 2 feet of water and I would be covered!

Obviously I’m being a bit melodramatic here (for example, that metre and a bit of rain didn’t all fall in one go, so the chances of me heading towards my own version of Atlantis are pretty slim) but I don’t think I’d fully grasped quite what South China Sea weather entails – I guess that’s what being pretty much on the Tropic of Cancer does for you!

Now, if, like me, all this talk has got you wondering about the difference between a cyclone, typhoon, hurrican, tropical storm, etc., then wonder no more. Wikipedia (my new favourite internet site) bursts that bubble by telling us “depending on their location and strength, tropical cyclones are referred to by other names, such as hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression and simply cyclone.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane] Lame. But hopefully you all learned something. Except for you super-intelligent people who no doubt already knew that.

So, no wonder everywhere you go here, no matter what the weather outside, everyone (and I mean women, children and even men) carries umbrellas. Even when there’s a sunny heatwave going on. And not your mini/micro, so-small-they-fit-in-a-tiny-handbag numbers either. I’m talking full-on, cyclone-resistant, guaranteed-to-not-blow-inside-out, long, hook-handled umbrellas.

But don’t worry. I have taken not and kitted myself out with such a weapon. It has a blue handle (hooked, natch) and little clouds on the material. Well you didn’t think I’d have an ugly black one did you?!