Inside the Weather Underground: meet Clarence Fong, Hong Kong’s own independent forecaster

On July 26, 1978, Hongkongers breathed a sigh of relief as Typhoon Agnes – heading straight for Guangdong in the South China Sea – swerved west and away from the British colony just 80km south of the coast.

But Agnes stunned the public when it made a sudden U-turn, or “cyclonic loop”, near Hainan Island and came charging back. The No 8 storm signal was raised for the second time in a week.

Heavy rain from the storm damaged 1,000 hectares of crops across the New Territories. A woman was killed in a landslide and two people drowned in a taxi “when it plunged into a pool of standing water”, according to a Royal Observatory report. More than 100 casualties were reported.

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Glued to the radio throughout the storm was awestruck seven-year-old Clarence Fong Chi-kong, who began recording Agnes’ movements on a weather map. Over time he would do the same for all storms that hit Hong Kong, complete with his own observations and forecasts.

Storm chasing quickly became a hobby. Improving forecasts became a mission.

As a secondary school pupil, Fong wrote his first forecasting system using BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) with his first computer, an Apple IIe. After graduating from Chinese University with a computer science degree he scored a job as an experimental officer with the Observatory, only to leave after three years citing a conflict between his job and his interest.

“Sometimes you will see decision-making which is not truly scientific. If you want it to be scientific, make it your interest,” Fong told the Post in 2003.