Typhoon!

Barely one day after landing here, my brother is about to see his first Typhoon! Typhoon Dujuan is heading straight for us at a blistering pace. (You can see the current track here. Note that this will only show the current typhoon track. I must do something about showing the typhoon tracks I have records for at some stage.)

This one is really heading *straight* for us, which is quite unusual. Normally, they come up from the South, having trashed the Phillipines first.

Right now, the T8 is up (See here), and Hong Kong is starting to shut down. The ferries are locked down, the schools are shut, the busses will run until about 1630 and the MTR may shut down later. Shops and offices will close and everyone will go home and Play MahJong.

I was just reading the Big White Guy's site, and his Tale of Typhoon York reminded me of my experiences from that Typhoon. We were living in Wanchai at the time, in a slim building which was quite tall. We weren't that high up (only 16 floors, or about half way up the building, but we could feel the building swaying in the wind.

There hasn't been a big typhoon like York in the last four years, so I guess we're about due a biggie. Right now, we're on the 1st floor of a 6 storey building (That's one floor up, for those used to American floor numbering), and in quite a sheltered little valley. We shouldn't experience the swaying this time.

Update: 8:30pm: it's been upgraded to a T9!

Update: 10:00pm: It's been downgraded from a T9 to a T8.

As of 1:30am, it's been downgraded to a T3.

It never looked like much from here. We had to close the windows, but we have to do that anyway when it's raining. The winds never got up to the howl I've heard before, and the rain never got to the stage where visibility is under five metres, which happens when the black rainstorm goes up. Perhaps it's because this flat is low down, in a little valley and sheltered by taller buildings. Perhaps it's that the typhoon went to the north, and hit the New Territories hard, which it certainly did.

Update: 03:30am: All signals are down. I kind of feel for the bloke seen getting bladdered on the local News: "Well, there'll be no work tomorrow, so why not go out and drink. Er, and meet people." Yep, you wouldn't want people to think that Essex lads just want to drink all night.