Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

"Russell D." wrote in message
...
riverman wrote:
On Aug 22, 7:48 pm, riverman wrote:


HOLY CRAP is it howling outside! It gets worse minute by minute. I
swear I just saw someone on a bicycle with a dog in a basket just blow
by my window...

--riverman

Hey, Myron, thanks for the blow by blow (pun intended). Very interesting.

Russell

Yeah, but we still need photos of the home place to determine the *REAL*
dangers.

Op

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

OK, woke up this morning and the storm has passed.

Shortly after my last post at 830 last night, I gave up any plans of
going walking outside. The winds were FEROCIOUS....steady at 70+mph
because of the windtunnel effect of the mountians framing Stanley
Harbor, and the waves coming up the bay were SLAMMING into the
breakwater and the spray was being tossed over 50 feet high. There is
an extremely tall decorative lamppost in front of my house that is
higher than my front window, and the water was splashing over the top
of that. At one point earlier in the evening, I was standing on the
breakwater and the wave peaks were over 20 feet high as they broke
OVER the breakwater and on to the street. Way over the top of my head,
but because of the shape of the bay, they were blowing past me instead
of breaking on top of me. All through the night, you could see the
white crest of the wave trains coming up the bay, then a second later
the entire front of my 8-story building was splashed as the waves
broke against the breakwater. The trees weren't even moving
around...they were just laid over as the wind howled against them.

Went for a walk this morning to assess the damage. All the trees along
a stretch of the waterfront have been stripped of their leaves AND
BRANCHES. Just big bare twigs standing out of the ground. Beside them,
there is another stretch where all the trees are laying down on their
sides, ending with the two largest trees on the waterfront...one is
broken in half and laying on its side, the other is missing a huge
section of branches.

Where the biggest waves kept hitting the breakwater in front of the
house, the entire top section, made of 200-300 pound granite blocks,
has been shifted and broken. The walkway behind another section of
breakwater has buckled and heaved, the lighting stripped away, the
benches broken and twisted, and the wood ripped up. No serious damage
to the shops on the waterfront, with the exception of one window
broken and all the plants rolled around. And of course, they all have
flood damage to one extent or another.

There is a small fishing fleet that harbors in Stanley Bay. These are
little 12-15 foot rowboats and johnboats that the fishermen use to
gillnet whatever they can, and the entire fleet is gone. About 2/3 of
the boats were tossed up on the rocks abutting the breakwater, and are
broken or destroyed. As for the other 1/3...there are a bunch of
anchor lines tied off on the shore that just run out into the bay and
down under the water. The boats have all been sunk...no way these
little 15 footers could have withstood the pounding from 20+ foot
waves crashing around in the little harbor for 6 hours. It was like
'The Perfect Storm' out there.

Anyway, I have some video of it all which I will try to mix down and
upload somewhere. The problem with still pictures of storms is that
they never capture the intensity...it just looks like trees that grow
sideways and a typical rainy day. Most of my video is of the pre-storm
and is anticlimactic, and the shots from outside the front window
during the worst of it was during the nighttime, so its not so clear.
But man, was it a HOWLER, and I think I have some good footage that
will show it. Fortunately, our own flat came out unscathed. I noticed
some blocked drainages on our patio before it flooded, and cleared
that out. Other than that, everything I tied down or stacked up
survived and is now waiting to be unpacked, untied and re-setup.

Yee hah. What a storm!

--riverma

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

For reference, here is a video from youtube from the breakwater,
pretty much exactly where I was standing last night before the storm
hit. This is from a very small storm that missed HK last year, and I
would rate the waves in this video as being 4-6 feet tall. The waves
last night were 15-25 feet tall, and were completely engulfing the
rockgarden on the left, and if a photographer was standing where this
guy was, they would have been washed away.The section of breakwater
that got damaged is about 20 feet to the photographers left, and where
the railing got displaced was 10 feet to his right.

--riverman

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

On Aug 23, 11:50*am, riverman wrote:
For reference, here is a video from youtube from the breakwater,
pretty much exactly where I was standing last night before the storm
hit. This is from a very small storm that missed HK last year, and I
would rate the waves in this video as being 4-6 feet tall. The waves
last night were 15-25 feet tall, and were completely engulfing the
rockgarden on the left, and if a photographer was standing where this
guy was, they would have been washed away.The section of breakwater
that got damaged is about 20 feet to the photographers left, and where
the railing got displaced was 10 feet to his right.

--riverman

d'OH. It would be nice if I provided the link.

http://www.youtube.com/v/lcNWX6s5fR0&hl=en&fs=1

This is another one from last year's storm, taken a few hours earlier
from the exact same spot. All the trees in this video are either taken
down or stripped bare, and the wooden walkway you see is now buckled
and broken. At the end, when the photographer goes "waaaa!" and turns
around, you can see right behind him a big yellow house with a
passageway on the right hand side. My flat is in the front of the
building on the right side of that passageway, just behind that
painted wall. Its in that passageway that I thought I was going to be
lifted off my feet.

http://www.youtube.com/v/t9tEqlUTxuk&hl=en&fs=1

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

http://www.youtube.com/v/t9tEqlUTxuk&hl=en&fs=1

You get a quick glimpse of my flat at 0.42 seconds. Its the salmon-
pink building just behind the painted wall. We're on the first floor
above the ground level...you can imagine how big the waves were if the
spray was hitting our house. The lampost you can see the base of at
0.42 was getting immersed in the waves.

--riverman
(OK, enough of this self-replying, now.)