They don't come any wetter than this month

Hong Kong has just endured its wettest month in 125 years of recorded weather history.

The Observatory said that by 5pm yesterday it had recorded 1,245mm of rain for the month, dethroning May 1889, when 1,241.1mm fell, as the wettest on record.

However, May 30, 1889, remains the wettest day on record; 520.6mm of rain fell in Kowloon that day.

By comparison, the black rainstorm that caused so much chaos and killed two people this month dumped just 307.1mm of rain on the city.

Neither day comes close to the world record for the wettest 24 hours, held by the town of Cilaos, on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. It received 1,854.2mm in March 1952.

People will doubtless attribute the record rainfall this month to the freak storm of June 7 and Severe Tropical Storm Fengshen, but there have been only six days without rain this month, a fact an Observatory spokesman put down to this year's monsoon being stronger than usual.