Outside my window it’s raining hard, the reason is that a typhoon is approaching China’s East coast. Chances are that it will hit Shanghai tomorrow, and the current rainfall is the beginning of the typhoon. Today a total of 200 mm is expected, meaning that likely the city will be flooded (not unusual for Shanghai).
The office management started to warn us yesterday already when typhoon Wipha was still a regular one. Overnight it changed from a normal tropical storm into a severe storm, and Bloomberg now started calling it a super typhoon. It is expected to land as a Category 4 storm, with winds up to 250 km/h, the fiercest one to hit Shanghai in 10 years. This morning the management in our apartment building also started to issue warnings, saying that we had to make sure to keep doors and windows closed, and make sure that nothing was outside on any of the balconies.
At the moment 200,000 people are being evacuated in lower parts of Shanghai, and put into temporary typhoon shelters. I don’t think this happened during the last typhoon that I witnessed in Shanghai. I also wonder whether I should park my car in our parking garage tonight: during the last typhoon that parking garage was flooded, and many cars were totally damaged. I did not live in my current compound yet, but remember it because it was reported on many TV stations due to the fact that the majority of the cars were Mercedes, BMW or Porsche.
I hope the typhoon will change it course over the next hours, but if it doesn’t I plan to Twitter live about it. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/marcvanderchijs
I should go to get a Twitter account… 🙂
Last Thursday David and me both ran to Biz, that was how we met each other, ha:)
Take care… I always remember to close the windows and doors..:)
In this way it seems you are a little free now. 🙂
L.
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