Hong Kong Typhoon

Typhoon season is here. The biggest typhoon in a dozen years hit Hong Kong late Monday night/early Tuesday morning. Typhoon Vincente was a category 4 typhoon, the second highest category. But Hong Kong gave it their highest storm warning, category 10. Winds over 88 mph canceled flights from the airport, closed the ferries and closed government offices. The airport reopened by the end of the day. The last I heard, about 130 people were injured. I haven’t heard about anyone dying so far.

Vincente was slamming into Mainland China by Tuesday afternoon, causing massive flooding and doing far more damage than in Hong Kong. There was flooding in the New Territories, but the rest of Hong Kong made out ok.

I haven’t noticed any damage to any permanent buildings, but lots of scaffolding and those temporary sheet metal walls they put up for construction were torn down or just blown away. Quite a few trees were knocked down. I never realized how many trees there are in Hong Kong, until they started tumbling down.

They turned some MTR stations into shelters just before the typhoon hit land. I’m not sure why the MTR can’t operate during typhoons. It’s underground. Maybe there is an issue with flooding, but then turning them into shelters would be a disastrous idea.

I’ve seen more than a few storms in Hong Kong. It always seems to be raining around here. But this was demonstrably worse. You could tell it was going to be different from the usual summer storm long before the wind pounded the buildings or the rain stabbed the pavement. Typhoons give off a charge in their air, not quite electric and not like a rain storm. You just know it is coming, similar to a tornado, but different.

I was at home when it hit. That’s probably the best place to be. I live in a tall building by Minneapolis standards, but average in Hong Kong. Tall buildings might seem like a bad place to be during a typhoon, but everything here is built to withstand higher wind speeds than anything ever recorded. A shelter underground might seem safer, but my building felt safer. With mostly views of the other buildings around us, there’s no great place to watch storms out the window, but it felt perfectly safe. I’m glad I didn’t have to spend the night in an MTR station.