Storm Track

I love storms, especially the typhoon/hurricane variety. 

I don't really know when this love started. Maybe when my house started to always look like it was hit by a typhoon, I appreciated the symmetry of seeing the same on the other side of my window. Or maybe since changing diapers and playing legos all day can seem insignificant, it is nice to be reminded that bigger things are happening out there somewhere. In any case, I get super excited when I see this little icon:

When it shows up in the HK weather app on my phone, it means there is a typhoon out there. And it might be coming towards us! (Though usually not.) 

Typhoon Vicente was not supposed to come towards Hong Kong. It was supposed to go south towards Hainan Island. But it kept defying the forecasters and the typhoon warning signals kept increasing... T1... T3... T8! 

At T8 the ferries stop. So when we learned that a T8 was going to be hoisted soon, Daddy got on an early ferry to come home. Who doesn't love to watch a storm and look for Daddy at the same time?

And the typhoon kept coming. See below... the typhoon started east of the Philippines and once it got inside a 400km radius (that black circle), it seemed to change it's mind. And not only in direction. It also greatly intensified and by the time it got near HK, it was a "severe typhoon" (the pink dots). 

Unfortunately, most of the exciting stuff happened in the middle of the night. But when I was awake at 1:52am to nurse Daniel, I saw there was a signal 10 hoisted. Signal 10 is the highest storm warning and HK has not issued a signal 10 warning in 13 years! 

In the radar image below, we live near the red dot. The eye of the storm (lower left corner) was always about 100km away, but it was still a good storm. 

Happy Typhoon Season!