The past 24 hours

During the past 24 hours the temp has varied between 27 and 34 degrees.

Th humidity dropping to 60%.

Guess which time both my cats chose to climb into bed with me and cuddle up?

16:00, yes, just when I needed two furry hot water bottles.

The sky was lit up constantly and flickered...

Hong Kong Hit By Record 13,000 Lightning Strikes in One Hour

By Nick Gentle - Sep 9, 2010

The Hong Kong Observatory reported 13,102 bolts of lightning struck ground across the city in the hour after midnight. Photographer: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Record lightning strikes pounded Hong Kong today in its most violent electrical storm, which caused flooding and left people trapped in elevators.
The Hong Kong Observatory reported 13,102 bolts of lightning struck ground across the city in the hour after midnight. That’s the most since such data was first collected in 2005, said David Hui, a scientific officer at the observatory. The storm raged from 9 p.m. yesterday to 4 a.m. today.
Wind gusts of more than 100 kilometers an hour were recorded in Tai O district at 12:40 a.m., according to an observatory weather bulletin. More than 40 millimeters of rain an hour was recorded across the territory during the storm, according to the observatory website.
Police and firefighters responded to flooding in a village in the northern New Territories shortly before midnight, said a police spokesman who declined to be named citing government policy.
Five reports of people being trapped in lifts were received, according to a spokeswoman for the government’s Information Services Department.
The weather was linked to Tropical Storm Meranti, which is moving north through the South China Sea, according Chan Sai- tick, acting senior scientific officer at the observatory. The weather pattern ahead of Meranti caused high temperatures across Hong Kong and southern China yesterday.
“That led to a large accumulation of energy and very unstable conditions during the afternoon,” Chan said in a phone interview. “That energy was subsequently released last night.”

Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport (1925 - 1998) 香港啟德機場

Kai Tak Airport VHHH (1925 - 1998) VHHX (since 1998) "traditional Chinese: 啟德機場" was the world's busiest international airport. The growth of Hong Kong put a strain on the airport's capacity. The airport was designed to handle 24 million passengers per year but in 1996, Kai Tak had already handled 29.5 million passengers, plus 1.56 million tonnes of freight, making it the third busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger traffic, and first in terms of cargo. However extremely busy Kai Tak was located in the city center, the Kowloon City "九龍城" (The city of nine dragons "city surrounded by nine mountains"), around by high density buildings, numerous skyscrapers and rugged mountains reaching an altitude of 2000 ft. with single narrow runway (13/31) very close to taxiway jutting out into Victoria Harbour, and further less than 10 Km is Hong Kong Island, another densely populated area with hills up to 2100 ft. The only way approach to Runway 13 was a sharp 47-degree right turn before and of the same level with the checkerboard (a small hill painted with red and white checkerboard at 1:18) at about 100-meter altitude then align with the runway. Often with strong crosswinds, the airport was infamously difficult to land at. However, due to the same reasons, only experience pilots were chosen for the challenging approach and air crash incidents rarely occur.

The low altitude manoeuvre was so spectacular that crowded streets of people, multi-storey buildings, vehicles and pavements can easily be "touch". I can hear "WOW" or "My God" from passengers when they aware of the home decorations through apartment windows which is of the same level with the aircraft like flickering of televisions even children say "Hi" to them before landing. In this video, you can found the most extremely landing, but these happened several hundred times per day, and was just the real daily life of Hong Kong people.

Thailand

http://thailandholidaynye.blogspot.com/

Before we came to Hong Kong we had a month in Thailand. I kept a paper diary at the time and will gradually transpose it to the Thailand holiday blog above.

Fostering in HK

http://fosteringanimals.blogspot.com/
I have now fostered 26 cats and 1 dog with the SPCA over the past year in HK.
I thought a blog might be of interest, so am blogging from the above address.

Black Rainstorm Warning Signal Special Announcement issued by the Hong Kong Observatory at 3:35 p.m.

The Rainstorm Warning Signal is now Black. This means that heavy rain has fallen or is expected to fall generally over Hong Kong, exceeding 70 millimetres in an hour, and is likely to continue.

Brookside

Living in Brookside is usually lovely. The gentle tinkle of the stream lulls me to sleep.
Here is the stream today...




I've moved everything I own up a floor.