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HONG KONG (AFP) — Typhoon Hagupit lashed Hong Kong with heavy rain and strong winds Tuesday evening, suspending flights and disrupting public transport as workers hurried home.

The Hong Kong Observatory issued a number eight tropical cyclone warning at 6:00pm (1000 GMT), as winds (in excess) of 63 kilometres (40 miles) an hour hit the southern Chinese city.

The observatory said that the typhoon was centred about 210 kilometres south-southeast of the territory and was forecast to move west or northwest towards the South China Sea.

It also expected flooding to occur in low-lying areas overnight due to the combined effect of typhoon and high tide.

A total of 47 flights in and out of Hong Kong had been cancelled by 4:00 pm, a Hong Kong Airport Authority spokeswoman told AFP.

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A number eight signal means that all domestic ferry and bus services are shut down, financial markets are closed and people are sent home from work.

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From a fairly recent color-enhanced IR image taken when Hagupit's eye was just SW of Victoria Harbour, it seems to my only-partially-trained-eyes, that intense eyewall convection is in evidence over the Hong Kong metropolitan area, as depicted by a so-called 'hot tower', with cloud top temps of an astounding -80 degrees C and colder, positioned directly over the city in the NE 'eyewall', likely resulting in the greatest effects inside the city, within these strongest squalls. I just wish I could get some radar imagery!



It may be that the bright reflectivity seen in the SW quadrant in an earlier microwave image rotated around and is displayed here as the strong eyewall feature in the southern semi-circle. And the 'hot tower' shown here over HK and Victoria Harbour may have developed just offshore and rotated into the city and immediate area as the calm eye of the cyclone transited just south and southwest of the region.

So it seems, and this is just speculation on my part here, that Hong Kong did NOT escape the effects of *at least some* of the eyewall convection. That they had tropical storm conditions is a certainty. I'm just wondering if they had sustained hurricane (typhoon) winds while that massive supercell was passing directly over them.

What are your thoughts on all this? Do you think HK was involved in the intense eyewall convection, or were the true typhoon winds located further offshore as Hagupit passed by? Do you think conditions were as bad as the imagery would suggest?

But, just as the core of the NW eyewall is now coming ashore, my thoughts and prayers go out to all those being beseiged by major typhoon conditions this very moment, as I write, as "Horrible Hagupit" closes in on it's eventual landfall over the next few hours. I just hope they're prepared and safely evacuated. They're certainly in for a horrible night, all those little villages that proliferate the region.

Edited by CoconutCandy (Tue Sep 23 2008 04:12 PM)

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