Hoozah - I managed to make it home today!
This is a bigger deal than you would realise as it is actually a number 8 thunderstorm in HK at the moment. In fact, the missus was afraid that I would have to stay the night in Shanghai while the storm passed. Luckily, I this wasn't necessary.
The funny thing is that I had no idea it was a number 8 thunderstorm until I got into HK. You see, I left the office in Shanghai at 12:30 (when it was still just a number 3) and had lunch before going straight to the airport. In fact, we were discussing the number 3 thunderstorm over lunch and wondering whether it would get upgraded!
Having said that, I should have guessed when the plane came in for its landing. The landing was a lot bumpier than usual.
Anyway, I'm now safely ensconced at home. :)
The best thing is that Gerry gave me lots of kisses when I got home! So happy to see him again!
:D
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2 comments:
Is the sacle for thunderstorms linear or logaritmic (like earthquakes)? I will be more impressed with your survival if the latter.
GG
I'm not sure how they decided the scale. The scaling itself is as follows:
Number 1 - not a big deal, you can expect some rain and wind.
Number 3 - semi-big deal, schools are closed.
Number 8 - big deal, businesses are closed.
There are a couple of numbers past 8 but they come up very rarely. Basically, its hard to even get a number 8 as the HK observatory is very hesitant to raise a number 8 as it means a lot of lost revenue for businesses (the cowards basically kowtow to corporate interests).
In essence, they should raise a number 8 when it isn't safe to go out (they determine this based on wind speed). In practice, they generaly raise a number 8 when it has little impact on businesses - for example on a friday afternoon. There was a "big" scandal in HK about this last time as the observatory only raised a number 3 despite the fact that the winds were strong enough to blow in the top window of a double-decker bus.
The justification used by the HK Observatory was that the wind speed in Central wasn't that high (probably due to the fact that the high rise buildings block all the wind). As you can imagine, they got pilloried by the public and by the media.
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