Typhoons are rather common, ordinary and regular in Hong Kong. During the season they happen pretty frequently, and the country is thus very well prepared for them. There is a clear warning system based on how close the Typhoon is. It starts with a simple T1 when a typhoon is around 800km away and might affect HK, it’s just like a heads up, be aware kind of thing and you will see it everywhere, the lobby of most buildings, train stations etc. T3 is the next level up and indicates that the typhoon is likely to get close enough to cause strong winds i.e. if you own a boat you probably want to make sure its well tied up, at home perhaps check you don’t have anything outside that might fly around, but generally life carries on as usual. Then it jumps up to T8 where sh*t gets serious, T8 also indicates the direction of the wind and to quote from Wikipedia:

Ferries generally stop running and all schools and law courts are closed. People away from home should either return immediately or find a safe place and remain there until the danger has passed. Windows and doors should be bolted and shuttered and cars parked in sheltered areas. Full typhoon precautions should be completed as soon as possible as it is extremely dangerous to delay these until No. 9 or No. 10 signal is issued.

Most companies have a policy related to T8, covering things like whether you have to come to work or go home, if so by what time in relation to when it switched to T8 etc. They definitely take this level very seriously and it became the main topic of conversation when it hit T8 for Typhoon Mangkhut. From there it ramps up quickly to a T9 or T10, both of which essentially mean stay the heck at home, no public transport is running, the airport is closed etc.

We have been in Hong Kong just over a month now and when talk of Typhoon Mangkhut began, I am not going to lie, it all seemed rather exciting. Going to shop for supplies and seeing the water shelves rapidly emptying out, hearing all the chatter and predictions as to when it would go from T3 to T8 and then if and when it would go T9 or T10. Especially considering my entire social circle currently consists of Pilots who are the utmost in weather nerds, the buzz was building.

Saturday night they raised it up to T8 and we pretty much knew we weren’t going to be leaving the house when we woke up. Sure enough, it was at T9 when we woke up and it quickly went to T10 which remained in place from 9.40am to 7.40pm, only one hour shorter than the record of 11 hours set in 1999. Turns out it was also the most intense storm on record, like a lovely “welcome to typhoons in Hong Kong” gift for us! We were lucky, our AirBnB was on the corner of the building facing away from the wind direction so our windows weren’t even being rattled and we didn’t actually feel the brunt of the storm. We could observe it out our window from the comfort of the couch as trees bent on insane angles and rain travelled sideways. We also went down to the lobby at one point to find a window had been broken and felt a little more of its power, the guys went for a tiny walk outside to experience it more first hand, I was too wussy/sensible. They said it was nuts to feel how powerful it was. We also followed pretty closely on social media seeing videos and photos posted from around Hong Kong and realised pretty quickly just how lucky we were. The country took an absolute beating, particularly a couple of waterfront areas, quite a few high rises in town had multiple windows blown out with paper flying everywhere and some extra crazy footage of a brand new Mercedes showroom totally flooded.

This was the first time I have had Facebook suggest to me that I should mark myself “Safe” which I duly did. Also got lots of messages from NZ and CH checking that we were ok so I think there was some dramatic footage being shown globally as well. All in all, it was quite surreal as we were so minimally affected, just stuck inside for the day really.

Heading to town the next day though was something else, we instantly saw the effects upon leaving our apartment block with lots of trees ripped up from the roots or massive branches snapped off and leaves and debris all over the place. The cleanup crew were already hard at work, you can really see this isn’t the first time they’ve dealt with this here. They kept schools and unis closed for another day to reduce the load on the city, and a lot of office workers also had the day off, either for similar reasons or due to some public transport not running. They didn’t get the transport fully up and running until later that Monday morning and apparently it was totally chaotic as everyone flooded back into the city.

We missed all that, arriving on a surprisingly smooth ferry ride into the city the next morning, spotting damage all over the show, mainly windows broken and trees ruined. Within a couple of days though it was pretty much back to normal (in the city anyway - I think the outlying areas and beaches that were affected will take a bit more to restore). Sadly though for a city which really needs it’s trees it will take some time to grow all those back again. So that’s it, our first Typhoon, tick that one off the bucket list I guess. I imagine it will become annoying and not exciting in the slightest after a while, so enjoy it while we can I guess!