It's December and it's cold (for Hong Kong) – as low as 15° in the mornings! But whilst everyone in Hong Kong is dressed in hats, gloves, scarves, is going, "Brrrr!!!" and complaining like hell, there's another more sinister threat on the horizon: Typhoon Bopha.
This typhoon is unusual for many reasons. It's late in the season (they usually stop by end of September), it's southerly (the last one to cross Mindanao, Tropical Cyclone Washi on 15th December last year, caused similar devastation) and it's a biggy (already a typhoon and set to increase to a severe typhoon as it crosses the South China sea!
Late season typhoons arriving in Hong Kong are not completely unknown: everyone knows it is more likely for typhoons to occur between May to October. Since 1963, however, there have been a total of 29 December typhoons. In 1993 there were 3 alone! Neither in this year have we had a glut of typhoons – a measly 11 in our area (see above pic) compared with the 24 of 1961!
The devastation that occurred in the Philippines is not just a testament to the ferocity of winds of over 100 mph and the accompanying rains that cause mudslides and floods (more than 200 deaths have so far been recorded), but is also a testament to improvements in typhoon management in that part of the world. On a much more dramatic scale last year's Typhoon Washi caused death of 1,300.
Is it the result of global warming? Of course, but on its own is probably not a significant indicator of it –phew! All typhoons are the result of solar radiation that warms the lovely tropical seas and causes massive evaporation and air movement.
Those picture postcard tropical blue skies and warm sandy beaches are the engines of so much of the world's wind, rain and weather cells. We get enough rain and humidity dumped here in southern China because we are at the edge of one of those naughty wettish cells.
So will Typhoon Bopha hit Hong Kong? It's a bit of a lottery, of course. You either love 'em or hate 'em (depending upon whether you are a teacher or student or an normal person). As can be seen in the picture above, we have had quite a few direct hits over the years and one category 10 this year –Typhoon Vicente which I described earlier on. Pretty certain I'm not looking forward to any major weather disruptions in the next few days because the Mem and meself is flying off to colder European climes on Sunday –much colder, in fact, than it will ever get in Hong Kong: "Brrrrr!!! -Bloody weather!"
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