Hong Kong, the bustling Asian financial hub, recently bore witness to an unprecedented meteorological event, experiencing the heaviest rainfall in its 140-year recorded history. This extraordinary deluge, brought about by the remnants of Typhoon Haikui, wreaked havoc across the city, resulting in a few fatalities and injuries to 83 individuals.
Heart-rending scenes recorded
Videos circulating online depicted torrents of water surging down steep hillsides, submerging narrow streets, malls, metro stations, and tunnels in waist-deep floods. The relentless downpour also plunged the nearby tech hub of Shenzhen, home to over 17.7 million people and vital economic connections in the Pearl River Delta, into a state of chaos.
Hong Kong was hit by widespread flooding on Friday as record-breaking rain paralysed the city. The Observatory recorded the highest one-hour rainfall since records began in 1884. Full story: https://t.co/xgbtoreVGt pic.twitter.com/ag0wuo65Rc
— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) September 8, 2023
Haikui, initially a typhoon, had made landfall in China’s Fujian province before weakening into a tropical depression. Its lingering moisture-laden clouds unleashed a deluge on regions already saturated by the previous week’s super typhoon, exacerbating the flooding.
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The downpour in Hong Kong began on Thursday, and the city’s weather observatory reported an astonishing hourly rainfall of 158.1 millimeters in the hour leading up to midnight—a record high since meteorological records began in 1884. This extraordinary event underscores the increasing unpredictability of weather patterns, even in regions with extensive historical climate data.
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