Tropical Storm Fanapi swung towards Hong Kong yesterday after cutting a swath across Taiwan as a severe typhoon and then slamming into the Fujian coast.
The hoisting of the No 3 signal just after 4pm surprised many as it is rare to see a storm that has already made landfall and is weakening prompt a higher typhoon signal in Hong Kong.
As the storm swept west across Guangdong, forecasters said they could not rule out the possibility of a No 8 signal later - although late last night they said it was less likely.
The storm has put a dampener on the Mid-Autumn Festival, with further heavy rain and thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow, and occasional rain for the holiday on Thursday expected to spoil the chance of seeing a full moon.
Mok Hing-yim, senior scientific officer at the Observatory, said the storm - the most severe to hit Taiwan this year - had weakened to a tropical storm by 6pm after making landfall in Fujian as a typhoon at 8am.
But it was continuing to draw closer to Hong Kong and was expected to pass within 100km overnight, bringing strong winds and some thunderstorms.
On Sunday, when the No 1 warning was hoisted at 4.35pm with the storm 540km to the east, the Observatory said it was hard then to predict the chance of higher warnings. Mok said the storm was still quite a long way off Taiwan when the first warning was issued. While many people might have found yesterday's warning an unexpected one, it was not so for forecasters who had been monitoring the storm's route, he said.
