Welcome to the world’s equestrian capital, Typhoon Nuri! You’ve come just in time for the Olympics and my thesis revisions.
This is the third time that a typhoon has come right as I was trying to meet an important thesis deadline. First, Typhoon Fengshen came when I submitted my thesis for examination. Yes, I was actually running through the outer rain bands with my final photocopies in hand for the grad school. Then there was Kammuri which nearly threatened to cancel my thesis defense. Thankfully, it was a little slow and just ended up giving me a free holiday the day after my defense.
Now there is Nuri—named after some cute bird—bearing down on us. This one is actually a real typhoon and it’s forecasted to directly hit Hong Kong. When you look at the maps, the typhoon symbol on the map completely obscures the small dot for Hong Kong. I say it’s a “real” typhoon because, unlike most so-called typhoons that hit Hong Kong, it will have hurricane-force winds according to the common grading system used in the U.S. Most of the typhoons that come through Hong Kong are actually tropical storms or depressions and they rarely hit the city directly. Instead they just skirt by. So typhoons in Hong Kong are only considered significant for one thing: free holidays. If the winds are strong enough, the weather observatory will raise the Typhoon Signal No. 8 and the city shuts down. Everyone cheers and rushes home. After they get home, they don’t “hunker down” for the storm. They just watch the TV and laugh at the pathetic scramblers who missed the last bus or ferry crawling in the windy rain with their umbrella inside-out. Nothing much happens except some rain and a few gusts. If we are lucky, we get an afternoon or morning off. Rarely we get a whole day. But most of the time, people have figured out, the No. 8 only happens on weekends.
But this time is different! This storm has sustained winds of 120km/h and gusts to 160km/h. It’s not that strong compared to the well-known American hurricanes, but we haven’t seen a storm like this in Hong Kong since at least 1999 (ok, I didn’t see it but I did some research). Our last storm this year, Kammuri, caused windows to fly off one building and break windows on another one nearby. But its winds were actually far less powerful than what is predicted from this typhoon.
So aren’t people worried? Aren’t they running around preparing like mad? Not at all! None of my co-workers were concerned about the storm itself, just whether or not there would be No. 8 signal. With the way things look now, it’s likely we will be seeing No. 10 tomorrow (“full blown typhoon” signal). And yet the final event for the Olympics tonight is proceeding as scheduled! Already, winds are picking up on the outer islands. I hope the event is not going to go too late…
Myself, I’m planning to tape our windows on our exposed side and move the computers away. I’ll probably make the cat sleep with us in the bedroom (where the window is better protected) rather than the living room. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I really would be surprised if this storm doesn’t cause some significant damage.
Oh yeah, my thesis revisions… I’ll probably work on those tomorrow too.
