Hong Kong experienced record-breaking rainfall on Thursday night, with the Observatory recording 158.1mm of rain between 11pm and midnight on Thursday — the highest since records began in 1884. Overall, there was 200mm of rainfall in Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and New Territories over the course of Thursday night.
The city’s meteorological body issued the Red Rainstorm warning at 9.05pm on Thursday night, but quickly upgraded it to the Black Rainstorm warning two hours later. When the alert was lifted at 3.40pm on Friday, it was the longest Black Rainstorm warning in the city’s history, lasting 16 hours and 35 minutes — surpassing the previous record of five hours and 47 minutes set in 1999.
Schools across the city are closed for the entire day and, while the MTR has not reduced its overall services, there were disruptions on the Kwun Tong line overnight due to waterlogging.
Several videos of the flooding across the city have been doing the rounds on social media. Many clips show the Wong Tai Sin station flooding, while others show rainwater gushing down the street in various parts of the SAR, prompting people stranded in their cars to get out of their vehicles and ride the storm out on their car roofs.
Header image credits: Social media
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