Mangkhut – update

Firstly it looks like we avoided the full force of Super Typhoon Mangkhut. It’s passed by Hong Kong around 100km south. The city has issued a force 10 hurricane signal and I can see why. We are currently experiencing some very severe weather with very heavy rain fall and large gusts of wind. Though, to be fair, living where we did on top of a big hill in Yorkshire, we’re pretty used to strong gusts coming our way.

These pictures reflect how things developed this morning. Needless to say, each time something exciting happened with the gusts of wind, our camera’s were nowhere in sight!

Woke up early to some cloud and light wind. You can still see the mountains in the background albeit a little distant. A far cry from the glorious sun of the last few days, though nowhere near as bad as the anticipated devastation that we were expecting.

Around an hour later you can see the cloud cover is thickening up. The mountains are hardly noticeable now. Still, nothing to shout about…

Just 1 hour 45 minutes later you can see it’s becoming a right old pea souper. It’s around this time the rain started however the wind is not to bad yet. A slow burner, this one.

The typhoon was at it’s closest point by midday and this is when the wind started. The image above was from a video I took whilst inside the apartment. Outside was too dangerous with all the flying debris and gusts. I’m sure we could see Toto and a small pair of red shoes somewhere amongst the building materials, and indeed portions of actual buildings. The sound of wind battering the building was constant and periodically smashing glass could be heard within close proximity.

Friends and work colleagues have posted on WeChat about various problems like blown out windows, smashed balcony glass, flooded balconies and ripped up trees. And the camaraderie amongst the teacher community is strong, with offers of refuge from those on lower floors. Luckily for us, floor 10 is relatively sheltered.

Messages from the local authorities state all metros, airports and bus services are closed, and are urging everyone to stay indoors so as to avoid flying debris. To top it off we’ve just been notified that there will be a city wide water outage so we have to fill buckets. Even so, we feel lucky that it is nowhere near as bad as it could be.

It’s just after 4:00pm and it’s dying off somewhat, although every so often there will still be some powerful gusts to shake us from our complacency. Hopefully it’ll all clear up by tomorrow and things can go back to China normal. I certainly do spare a thought for others that took the full force of this in the Philippines and for those it’s still going to affect further west in China.

So for now the electricity and internet are holding out though we’ve definitely experienced a few dips in power. We had the offer of going up to experience the typhoon on floor 31 with friends that were sheltering under the table. Heading to the lifts and the lights started flickering erratically – we gave that visit a miss! Fingers crossed the air con units hold out – I don’t know what I’ll do if they give up because it’s still crazy warm and humid out here!