From moon to typhoon

When you move from England you consider yourself somewhat of an expert on rain. After all, how many times have you heard people say “Oh you live in London. It must rain all the time.” That is, until you move to Hong Kong and experience two typhoons in the span of a week.

After another week of scortching heat, the weather suddenly turned a little cooler, a sign of the impending storm. We woke up Friday morning to rain, a lot of it, but nothing us England rain experts had not seen before. By 7 a.m, our phones were buzzing with messages from S’s school saying that all kindergartens were closed. Poor L still had to trudge to school in the rain. Not quite sure what the logic is behind closing early years, but not the rest of the school, but S was very happy to have a free day at home. The government had issued a T3 signal. Typhoon Lionrock had officially arrived. Hong Kong uses a signal system to classify the intensity of a typhoon. T3 signals that winds are strong and blowing in the direction of HK. A T8 signal indicates gale winds and pretty much everything shuts down.

If you are asking yourself what exactly is a typhoon don’t worry, I had to google it when L asked me how its different from a hurricane (it is the same thing, just over the North Pacific) - thank you Google. Not sure how our parents survived the 20 million questions without the help of Google! Thanks to Google, I’ve managed to maintain some semblance of intellectual authority with my kids.

However, by mid-morning it was wild outside. The government raised the signal to a T8 lasting 22 hours, the longest a T8 signal has been in effect since 1978. I now fully understand where the term “wind howling” comes from. The rain came crashing down like I’ve never seen before (despite my years as a London rain expert). I only managed to take a video before the rain came thundering so the below video is really the “calm” before the eye of the storm!

What I later learned was that the ‘typhoon’ classification has a lot more to do with wind than rain (although raining like there‘s no tomorrow is a common effect). The next day was even crazier with gusty winds and rain falling like the gods were angry all day. While we were lucky and Lionrock didn’t leave lasting damage to us personally, apart from a few fallen branches and water seeping through one window, not everyone was so lucky. In the city in Happy Valley, the heavy winds brought down scaffolding on a 30 storey building killing one construction worker and harming several others.

(Picture from Twitter)

Just as quickly as Lionrock appeared she/he (how do you classify a typhoon) disappeared. By Monday morning, the skies were bright and sunny once again. This lasted for a day before the next monster, this time called Kompasa, was to arrive. Having faced criticism for raising the T8 signal too late, this time the T8 was raised despite only being a bit windy outside. Thankfully Kompasa came with less water and flooding, but still very strong winds, earning its classification as a typhoon.

As soon as it looked like Kompasa was saying sayonara, we took the chance to go outside for a bike/scooter ride after being cooped up indoors all day. However, Kompasa wasn’t quite done, and as an afterthought it began to pour again. Luckily we managed to find shelter under a garage until the rain stopped.

Let’s hope that’s the last of the typhoons (and the scorching heat)!