Record-breaking rainfall paralyzed much of Hong Kong on Friday, with flash flooding submerging metro stations and trapping drivers on roads, as authorities suspended schools and urged the public to seek safe shelter.
Photos and videos showed residents wading through murky brown floodwaters as heavy rain continued to fall. In some low-lying areas, streets were transformed into surging torrents, with authorities forced to rescue motorists stuck in their vehicles.
The deluge began late Thursday night, with the Hong Kong Observatory recording more than 158 millimeters (6.2 inches) in rain between 11 p.m. and midnight, the highest hourly rainfall since records began in 1884, the government said in a news release.
Some parts of the densely populated city of 7.5 million saw almost 500 mm (19.7 inches) of rainfall in 24 hours, according to online weather data site OGimet.
The water management infrastructure is excellent. But it was designed to cope with century floods, not the kind that happen every other century.
Edit: the drainage systems were in fact designed to cope with a once-in-200-years flood. But this was a 500 year flood. A quarter of Hong Kong’s annual rainfall poured down in a day—and this is a place with notorious rain storms through the summer
They also just had a typhoon, which means there was probably a lot of debris making things worse.
Debris and saturated land so the water had nowhwre to go.
but they will now, right? right?!
There are some events that are costlier to plan for than to clean up after. I’m not sure if this is one of those, but…