Storms of this magnitude have not been seen before Hong Kong for at least 140 years. Torrential rains have flooded the former British colony with at least two deaths and more than a hundred injuries, flooding the streets and some subway stations and forcing schools, the stock exchange and most businesses to close.
The severe storms began Thursday evening with authorities issuing a black alert, which is triggered when rainfall exceeds 70 millimeters per hour.
In the hour before midnight, the city’s weather observatory recorded rainfall of 158.1 millimeters at its headquarters, the highest percentage since records began in 1884. According to experts, climate change has increased the tropical storm intensity with more rain and stronger gusts leading to flash flooding and damage.
The part of China hardest hit was the south, due to the extreme humidity caused by the typhoons. The extreme climate has in fact brought chaos to the nearby city of Shenzhen, which has 17.7 million people. The rains were caused by Haikui, a typhoon that hit Fujian province, opposite Taiwan, on Tuesday.
Hundreds of flights were suspended in Guangdong province, while local authorities advised residents of low-lying areas to consider evacuating. Taxis struggled to cross the flooded streets as commuters tried to get to work among cars blocked by the downpour. “It seemed like the whole neighborhood was cut off from the flood,” Olivia Lam, who lives on the eastern side of Hong Kong island, told France Presse. In the Shau Kei Wan district, boulders and mud from a landslide spilled into a nearby basketball court, while residents of a building just 30 meters from the landslide lined up with buckets to collect drinking water. Not even the island of Lantau escaped the showers, where overflowing rivers turned the streets into streams.
In the evening the showers eased somewhat and the authorities downgraded the storm from “black” to “yellow”, but warned that the rains were expected to continue into the weekend. The flooding could cost Hong Kong at least $100 million, compared to the $470 million in damage suffered when the city was hit by Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence estimate.