Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

They cancelled school today since the HK government is expected to
hoist the Typhoon 8 warning within the hour. In the absence of any
African coups, earthquakes or tsunami to report on, I thought I'd keep
up my natural disaster TRs with some info on the imminent Typhoon.

Here in HK, they have a system to keep the population aware of
incoming storms. Its an artifact of the turn of the century, when
hundreds of opium ships came in and out, but wireless was not in
common use. On the top of the biggest hill on the island (a very big
hill at that), they would hoist a series of large markers that could
be seen out to sea. The original markers were denoted as 'typhoon
signal 1', 'typhoon signal 2, 'typhoon signal 3', etc up to 'typhoon
signal 10'. Soon thereafter, they were shortened to only Typhoon 1,
Typhoon 3, Typhoon 8 and Typhoon 10.

Signal 1 means that a severe storm is approaching...stay tuned.
Locally, when a T1 is issued, nothing changes (schools and businesses
are open), but people start getting prepared in case the signal
increases. When a T3 is issued, it means a typhoon is within a couple
hundred miles, and may or may not be moving toward HK. If it is
determined to potentially hit the city within a few hours, a T8 is
issued and all businesses and schools shut down, everyone goes home,
and roads are closed to private transport. If a T10 is issued, then
the storm is on your head, everything gets boxed up and people are not
even allowed to leave the buildings they are in.

Along with the T signals, there are rainfall signals. An Amber rain
means 'its coming down hard and watch to see if it gets worse'. A Red
Rain is the worst downfall you ever saw, with sheets of torrential
rain that can wash out roads. A Black Rain is like a firehose is over
your head, and hillsides and buildings get washed out. Streets
instantly flood as drainages get overwhelmed, and its not uncommon for
cars and pedestrians to get washed away.

Currently, we are under a T3, with the T8 expected in a few minutes.
Until about 5 minutes ago, it was fairly calm with unlimited
visibility, but the sea swells were throwing the big shipping vessels
around (I can an unobstructed view of the ocean from my front window).
One particular empty ship, maybe 250 feet long, was running for open
water and pitching like crazy, tossing a bow wave about 50 feet higher
than its front deck. The local weather is reporting seas to be upwards
of 20 meters (60 feet) this morning.

As I write this, the rain bands are just hitting now. Visibility just
dropped to about a mile, and the wind is starting to pick up. For now,
its no worse than any regular rain shower, with 10 mph winds and small
drops. But the storm is still 8 hours away....

Stay tuned. I'm going for a walk. :-)

--riverman

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:39:40 -0700 (PDT), riverman
wrote:

Along with the T signals, there are rainfall signals. An Amber rain
means 'its coming down hard and watch to see if it gets worse'. A Red
Rain is the worst downfall you ever saw, with sheets of torrential
rain that can wash out roads. A Black Rain is like a firehose is over
your head, and hillsides and buildings get washed out. Streets
instantly flood as drainages get overwhelmed, and its not uncommon for
cars and pedestrians to get washed away.

Very similar to a system of warnings they had in Japan in the 50s. I
remember one typhoon that was due to hit us around 1500. We came off
a mid-watch at 0730, and without showering, simply changed into our
civies and ran for the main gate hoping to get past it before they
shut off liberty. If we were past the gate, we were home free and
could go to our "shack-ups" in Yokohama. We didn't make it, so back
to the barracks, and slept until it got dark.

The wind was howling and sheets of rain were pelting our bodies when
four of us jumped over the fence behind the ham shack. We made it
into the small town of Seya to catch the train into Yokohama. Only
problem: the train was electric and there was no electricity. We
talked a cabbie into taking us to town for $10, and all four of us
jammed into his tiny Renault.

When we got into Yokohama, it was a ghost town. The wind had knocked
down signs and traffic signals, no electricity, and there was not a
car/bus/cop/person to be seen. Many of the streets were flooded,
especially in China Town near the harbor where I had a shack. My
"moose" (Japanese girlfriend) was surprised but happy to see me.
Sayoko san. The scariest part was not the jumping of the fence, nor
the hike into Seya, nor ride into Yokohama, but going to bed with a
candle burning. The floors were rice mats, the walls between rooms
were paper and thin wood. It was cozy, but deadly if a fire started.

Man, that was 50+ years ago. I sure hope that Sayoko san didn't age
as badly as I have. She'd be 67 now..... probably still
beautiful.....

Why do they call that ocean the Pacific when it is anything but?

Good luck with "your" typhoon, Mryon, and thanks for bringing back
some fond memories.

Dave

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

On Aug 22, 7:39*am, riverman wrote:
They cancelled school today since the HK government is expected to
hoist the Typhoon 8 warning within the hour. In the absence of any
African coups, earthquakes or tsunami to report on, I thought I'd keep
up my natural disaster TRs with some info on the imminent Typhoon.

Here in HK, they have a system to keep the population aware of
incoming storms. Its an artifact of the turn of the century, when
hundreds of opium ships came in and out, but wireless was not in
common use. On the top of the biggest hill on the island (a very big
hill at that), they would hoist a series of large markers that could
be seen out to sea. The original markers were denoted as 'typhoon
signal 1', 'typhoon signal 2, 'typhoon signal 3', etc up to 'typhoon
signal 10'. Soon thereafter, they were shortened to only Typhoon 1,
Typhoon 3, Typhoon 8 and Typhoon 10.

Signal 1 means that a severe storm is approaching...stay tuned.
Locally, when a T1 is issued, nothing changes (schools and businesses
are open), but people start getting prepared in case the signal
increases. When a T3 is issued, it means a typhoon is within a couple
hundred miles, and may or may not be moving toward HK. If it is
determined to potentially hit the city within a few hours, a T8 is
issued and all businesses and schools shut down, everyone goes home,
and roads are closed to private transport. If a T10 is issued, then
the storm is on your head, everything gets boxed up and people are not
even allowed to leave the buildings they are in.

Along with the T signals, there are rainfall signals. An Amber rain
means 'its coming down hard and watch to see if it gets worse'. A Red
Rain is the worst downfall you ever saw, with sheets of torrential
rain that can wash out roads. A Black Rain is like a firehose is over
your head, and hillsides and buildings get washed out. Streets
instantly flood as drainages get overwhelmed, and its not uncommon for
cars and pedestrians to get washed away.

Currently, we are under a T3, with the T8 expected in a few minutes.
Until about 5 minutes ago, it was fairly calm with unlimited
visibility, but the sea swells were throwing the big shipping vessels
around (I can an unobstructed view of the ocean from my front window).
One particular empty ship, maybe 250 feet long, was running for open
water and pitching like crazy, tossing a bow wave about 50 feet higher
than its front deck. The local weather is reporting seas to be upwards
of 20 meters (60 feet) this morning.

As I write this, the rain bands are just hitting now. Visibility just
dropped to about a mile, and the wind is starting to pick up. For now,
its no worse than any regular rain shower, with 10 mph winds and small
drops. But the storm is still 8 hours away....

Stay tuned. I'm going for a walk. :-)

--riverman

OK, just got back from my walk, and as expected they have hoisted the
T8 signal. All non-essential businesses are closed, and folks are
headed home for the unexpected 3-day weekend. There is a very cool
ominous feel to town this morning...all the bars and restaurants on
the waterfront are boxed up tight, windows taped with X's and storm
shields in place (big metal garage doors that cover the front of the
buildings). There are already sandbags framing the buildings and
directing the impending waters to the drainage ditches; tables and
benches are sandbagged to keep them from blowing away, and plants,
signs, sunshades and anything else that might get blown around is
packed up or tied down.

What makes it bizarre is that the outer rain bands are intermittent:
at this moment, its a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and no wind
at all. 10 minutes ago, it was a drizzly friday morning, with small
whitecaps being tossed around in the stiff breeze. As I look out to
sea, there is a band of whitewater about 3 miles away from a powerful
gust approaching, throwing spray up what must be 20 feet high. As the
day progresses, the open-air windows will close off, and the gusts
will join up until they form an hours-long nonstop howling maelstrom,
with sheets of torrential downpour, half-dollar sized hail, 70mph
winds, and waves 20 feet tall crashing into the breakwater in front of
my flat.

This should be fun. More in a few hours.

--riverman

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

Update 3: 11:15 AM

OK, the weather definitely has become 'stormy'...at least for half my
house. I live on the southeast side of HK island, and to the northwest
of me is a very large series of hills. The wind is coming down from
that direction, and my back patio area is being hit fairly hard: the
plants are whipping around, the picnic table is being pelted and the
cover over my barbeque is flapping around quite vigorously. I'd say
the winds against that side of the house are blowing at about 40mph,
with gusts at about 50.

However, out the front window, facing southeast, it just a drizzly
day! The building is shading the wind, so my front patio is bone dry,
the plants are happily sitting there, and the street below my window
(Stanley Market) seems like it is having a typical sunday morning,
waiting to open. In the distance I can see sheets of rain coming down
over the sea from around the sheltering hills, but the whitecaps have
subsided as this side of the island is the lee side. However, the news
just announced that the HK Observatory (the local weather gurus) have
announced that they still expect the storm to be one of the worst in
recent times, and to make a direct hit landfall, necessitating the
dreaded T10 signal sometime this afternoon. Probably along with the
dreaded Black Rain signal...it just doesn't get any more severe than
that.

The center of the storm is still about 6 hours out, and with the front
stormwall as 'steep' as it appears on the satellite images, things
should get really rocking in the next few hours. Time to go for
another walk.

--riverman

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

Hmmm, its now 4 pm, the website says the typhoon is RIGHT on top of my
head, and the best I can say is that its a mildly drizzly day. It
appears that we are in the eye, but overall its been pretty
anticlimatic.The winds have been coming from the NW pretty
consistently, so Stanley Harbor has been in the lee of HK island for
the duration. I can see some huge swells in the channel beyond the
harbor, but at the mouth of the harbor, they settle down.

Meanwhile, at this moment its really very funky....the air is
completely still, the sky is not crystal clear (since this storm is
not strongly defined), but its definitely a bright day with patches of
blue showing through. Birds are chirping, the rains have stopped, and
nothing is happening. I've always wanted to be in the eye of a
hurricane or typhoon....chalk up one more experience. :-)

With any luck, as soon as the storm passes a bit further inland, the
winds will reverse and instead of being on the lee side, we will be
face-on in the windward side and we'll get the full effects. The HK
Observatory has raised a T9 signal, which basically means its going to
be a T10 shortly, but there haven't been any bad rains with this storm
at all...not even an Amber rain. Some parts of the New Territories
have had winds of 100kph (66mph), which aren't so bad. The worst we;ve
seen here have been 50mph, tops.

Lets keep our fingers crossed for something fun to happen. :-)

--riverman

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

Lets keep our fingers crossed for something fun to happen. *:-)


Allllll Righty then! NOW we're cooking with gas. :-)

Just went outside, and man is it a typhoon! Winds are coming right up
the harbor, straight up the slot, and the waves are 10-20 feet
tall....these are waves where its usually just 2-3 inches of
nothingness. The waves are SLAMMING into the breakwater, breaking sky
high, and the winds are so hard that the spray is flying right into
the front of my flat, which is back about 50 feet and up on what
Americans call the second floor, but the rest of the world calls the
first floor (one above the Ground floor). The winds are
howling....steady at about 60 mph with gusts closer to 90. Trees are
flailing around like hay, signs are blowing down the road, alarms are
going off in every other building, branches are breaking and getting
rolled down the street, and at one point I had to hold on to the
handrail on the breakwater as the wind and waves were so strong they
threatened to knock me down. In the alley in front of my house
(Stanley Main St), the windtunnel effect is so strong that I can
barely make headway, and feel like I'm about to get lifted right off
my feet.

And the storm is strengthening! And most impressive of all....its been
downgraded to a Tropical Storm, so its not even a Typhoon any more.
WOW. Its ONLY a T9....what the HELL is a T10 like????

I'm going to dry off, have a cup of coffee, and go out in it again.
Its blowing so hard, its scary. I LOVE this stuff. :-)

--riverman

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

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

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

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...

With all the technology, why didn't they just steer the storm towards
Japan?
I just saw some news out of China on CNN. Evidently, yesterday, a
woman there gave birth to a 12 year old gymanst who's expected to
compete in the London Olympics.
You stay safe. Hope they don't arrest you for reading the above.
Frank Reid

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

"riverman" wrote in message
...
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

***********************

Thanks for the storm updates.... It would be great if you took some photos
of your flat and the neighborhood so we can get and idea of your surrounds.

Hope all is well...

Thanks,
JT

Typhoon updates; riverman-sized (and style) TR
 

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

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.)