or: That was the scariest typhoon I’ve been in

Super typhoon Mangkhut was blowing through HK last Sunday. I didn’t write about it then. I distracted myself writing about something that has nothing to do with strong winds (unless you count the “wind of change”). I did this because this was the first time I have been scared in a typhoon.

I wanted to focus on something else.

With sustained winds consistently reaching 250km per hour, the building I was in swayed fairly continuously for a few hours. It is discombobulating when you’re on the 18th floor (which is quite low for this particular building), the pendant lights wobble and the ground shifts while it seems like other things are still. The building is designed to do this in a similar way to how buildings in Japan do for earthquakes so that’s nothing to panic over.

For HK, this has been officially declared the most intense storm since records began in 1946. It caused a lot of damage with over 1,500 uprooted trees, who knows how many broken windows, roofs ripped off, fallen bamboo scaffolding (one of the reasons why this lightweight material is used) and quite a few pieces of outdoor furniture to be hurled from the balconies and rooftops where they weren’t strapped down strongly enough (if at all). Over 100 people were injured and no deaths. These all seemed to happen in the Philippines and China.

Typhoons are fairly common here and when there hasn’t been a bad one for a while, it is possible to become a bit complacent. My first typhoon when I arrived in 2007 was a bit of a non-event after all the build up. I was led to believe it was going to be horrendous. It was for some on the other side of HK yet where I was, it was calm enough that we all went to a neighbors place for drinks outside and a little barbecue.

We knew in advance this wasn’t one to be complacent over.

Yet there were some people that went out in it and not just to take their dogs to the toilet.

Supermarket shelves were fairly bare compared to normal so people had stocked up by the time I decided I should buy some fruit and veggies to see me through. There was still some of these left. Less noodles and rice than usual. Where I’m staying had pretty much everything else.

I don’t know why I didn’t buy wine. I had the cheese and biscuits.

Winds and rain started here on Saturday night. Even this sounded different to normal and I woke a few times due to the noise.

By 7.30am, it was a heavy rainstorm. By 9.50am it was a T10 (the highest typhoon signal in HK) and an amber rainstorm warning. Red was to follow, a landslip warning and flood warnings too. Bizarrely one of my weather apps said that it had been snowing for at 120 minutes at 2pm. 

As the storm gathered momentum, the windows began to shake and two started to leak. I found a bucket to put under one and two protein shake containers for the other. It worked. A towel is pointless when the rain is like this as it takes the paint off once it’s soaked. A towel is best used after the storm.

Rain hit the windows from various directions and bounced. It looked like small shards of glass and sounded like it too. The drops left behind on the windows were blown simultaneously in one direction than another, like synchronized swimmers with a very complicated routine. Or as I described to someone else, like a school of tadpoles being chased by something a lot bigger. They were indecisive yet knew they should stick together.

One nearby crane had been taken down while another was left extended. I watched this sway and over the course of the day, it spun in many directions. I had already tried to calculate that if it fell, would it hit this building. I found out later that a crane fell off the top of another building so I think the regulations on what to do with cranes during a typhoon may now change.

The noise of the wind increased, at times winning the noise competition against the rain. It was difficult to hear people on the phone.

Cocooned inside, it was humid. I turned the air-conditioning on. I turned the air-conditioning off. I turned it on. I turned it off.

Repeat.

Repeat quite a bit.

I read. I messaged with the outside world. People in HK sharing what it was like where they were. People outside of HK checking to see if I was ok (thanks very much for this. Aside from helping me to focus on something else, it was great to here from you all!). I wrote messages on Facebook.

The whole day passed.

Then the typhoon passed into mainland China.

The clean-up began.

Air-conditioning on. Air-conditioning off.

 

* Thanks to Bon Jovi for the title to this post.