York was just an autumn shower compared with the death and destruction wrought

WEATHER forecast, issued by the Hong Kong Observatory, for Tuesday, September 18, 1906: 'Variable winds, moderate, probably some thunder showers.' Reality, the following day in South China Morning Post headlines: 'The Typhoon. Terrible loss of life. Immense destruction.' Who would be a weatherman? Updates lambasted people the Post sneeringly called the 'professional weather prophets' of Kowloon, but they were predictable scapegoats after a catastrophe for which headlines could have read: 'Ten thousand dead; 141 ships sunk or wrecked; 2,413 sampans and junks destroyed.' The unnamed typhoon of 1906remains the most destructive to slap Hong Kong's face. Another killed 11,000 people in 1937, when villages around Tolo Harbour were flooded, but damage was less widespread.

They are part of the local psyche: the word 'typhoon' is derived from the Cantonese toi fung. Called hurricanes elsewhere, they have helped to shape Hong Kong: the Yau Ma Tei typhoon shelter resulted from the events of 1906, our skyscrapers are designed to rebuff them, and forecasting has evolved in response to their fury - not least that visited on us for two hours 93 years ago . . .

'Shrieking laughter at Observatory notices, the typhoon swooped without so much as a by-your-leave,' ran one Post report. Ignoring the suffering, the writer caught a mood of almost comical astonishment that mere nature dared upset colonial routine. 'In the Hongkong Hotel,' he wrote, 'breakfast was proceeding and the menfolk preparing for the humdrum of office work, when the wind, sweeping at Heaven knows how many knots down Peddar [sic] Street, rattled shutters, bellied out curtains, and caused the boys to forget their duties and slink to the verandahs to see what all the to-do was about.' The 'to-do' resulted in a high death toll among a population of only 450,000. About 9,000 victims were boat people who drowned during a six-metre storm surge. One correspondent aboard HMS Tamar, anchored in the harbour, wrote: 'There was an endless procession of junks and sam- pans tearing past with wretches still on board, all terrified, doing joss-pidgin to their gods and throwing joss papers into the water.' Most vessels had no time to run for cover, and finger-pointing relied on the fact that only 16 minutes' warning had been given by the observatory. But records show that the criticism - 'We have commented so often on the observatory and its absence of early warnings, without any notice being taken', said the Post - might have been hasty.

Typhoons, prevalent from May to October, develop near the Equator in the western Pacific and move west, as wind speeds grow to up to 240 kilometres an hour. Sketchy observatory information suggests the storm of 1906 may have been a local storm which boiled suddenly in the South China Sea, giving weathermen little chance to track it.

Back on not-so-dry land, the Post continued to count the cost. 'The hill roads were strewn with wreckage, including broken rickshaws, venetians, lanterns, birdcages, corrugated iron, shoes, boards, bricks . . . chimney tops, trees, branches went flying. Of language there was no end, and some echoed above the din of the storm.' Such a surprise would be impossible today. The SAR is guarded by a battery of weather-monitoring hardware, and information is constantly exchanged by observatories around the world. 'The main difference,' said Edwin Ginn, a senior scientific officer at the Observatory, 'is that instead of just one chap making observations, Hong Kong sits within a network of 26 automatic weather stations which relay wind, pressure, rainfall and humidity readings every minute. They produce a mass of surface information, while weather balloons and satellite information show us cloud systems.

'The public is alert and listens to updates,' he added, 'but some still ignore us. York had wind speeds of 230km/h, but only three people were killed - one of whom went windsurfing.' According to some reports, seven typhoons have struck Hong Kong this year, making it the busiest since 1964. But at least two did not have the necessary wind speeds to merit the title. Tropical cyclones (a catch-all term) are classified according to wind intensity: they begin as tropical depressions, become tropical storms, then severe tropical storms and are renamed typhoons when winds of 118km/h or more are identified near the centre. Signal No 10 is 'hoisted' at that point if the typhoon is expected to affect the SAR, and remains in force when it arrives. (A typhoon scores a 'direct hit' if it passes within 100km of Hong Kong.) A signalling system began in 1884, when large metal drums, balls and cones, in ascending order according to storm severity, were hoisted in the harbour for sailors. A typhoon gun was fired to inform the public, giving way in 1907 to rockets, which were louder. The last 'typhoon boom' was fired over the harbour in 1937. The first numbered signalling system appeared in 1917 and ran from 1 to 7. It was amended in 1931 to 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, with 5 to 8 signifying gales. The No 3 (strong wind) signal was introduced between the No 1 (stand-by) signal and the gale signals in 1956.