Hong Kong hosts typhoon Mangkhut, the world's strongest storm this year

HONG KONG – The narrow, bustling streets of this skyscraper metropolis were emptied Saturday night as typhoon Mangkhut, the world's most powerful storm this year, crossed the Pacific to the west.

At 6 pm, the Hong Kong Observatory issued a No. 3 signal, a weather advisory indicating that strong winds from the tropical depression are expected. At that time, shopkeepers secured windows with X masking tape. Airlines canceled hundreds of flights. The grocery store shelves are being laid bare as China's densely populated autonomous territory of more than 7 million people is getting ready to buy essential items. At the peak of Victoria Peak, the picturesque mountain viewpoint, a uniformed guide led crowds of tourists out of the tram to take quick photos and set off for sunset in China's Guangdong Province.

"The typhoon is coming," he said. "To hurry up."

Just before midnight, the observatory warned of a "serious threat to the region," with the storm still about 267 miles to the southeast. The official meteorological service took the typhoon to gale # 8 – indicating a tropical storm – at 1:10 am, which forced the city to stop altogether. Sunday afternoon, the storm surge could raise the water level of more than 11 feet in Victoria Harbor and even higher in Tai O, a fishing village on the west side of the island. # 39; island. Lantau, the largest island of Hong Kong.

Waves of the super typhoon Mangkhut, named after the Thai word for the mangosteen, swept a woman at sea in Taiwan on Friday. Earlier Saturday, the storm left at least 16 died in the Philippines as he descended on Luzon with sustained winds of more than 105 miles per hour and gusts of nearly 162 miles per hour, and flooded the island north of the archipelago with flood waters.

The Philippines had to suffer the worst damage. Last year, nearly 11 million Filipino families reported being poor in an investigation, a sharp increase over the previous year. pics Online, the tin roofs were ripped off Saturday. The country remains haunted by the Super Typhoon Haiyan disaster, which claimed more than 6,000 lives in November 2013.

The storm comes as Hurricane Florence flooded the Carolinas in the United States from a terrifying category 4 to a category 1 as it landed on Friday morning. Saturday afternoon, the storm had shut down nearly 930,000 homes and businesses and several people death.

"Typhoon Mangkhut is a huge monster with forces very similar to those of Hurricane Florence, "said Yuan Xu, associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Still, the damage in Hong Kong will be limited, he said. The city started to build electric cable tunnels in 1988 and many of its power lines are underground.

"The city has learned lessons from the past to prepare properly," he said. "We do not expect the strong wind to cause significant, if any, disruption to the electricity supply."

However, hotel staff in the Lan Kwai Fong area in central Hong Kong warned customers to charge their phones and stock up on food and water.

It is difficult for scientists to directly connect powerful storms with rising global temperatures on either side of the planet. But a team of researchers from Stony Brook University, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the US National Atmospheric Research Center found this week that Hurricane Florence was likely to plunge the Carolinas with 50% more rain than in the case of climate change. their study. The team used a computer model to compile two sets of forecasts, one with observed atmospheric conditions and sea surface temperatures, and the other devoid of global warming resulting from climate change.

No research of this type has yet been done on Typhoon Mangkhut. But Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and professor at Texas Tech University, said the storm shows the kind of extreme weather conditions that should become more common record fossil fuel emissions increase the warming.

"We know that, on average, climate change strengthens storms, causes them to intensify more rapidly, increase the amount of rain associated with a given storm, and even push them forward more slowly, "he said. she declared.

This story has been updated to reflect the latest information on Hurricane Florence.

CORRECTION: This story had previously distorted the force of Typhoon Mangkhut at the approach of Hong Kong. The storm is no longer a super typhoon.