Clear skies for now, but rain will return to Hong Kong by weekend
Low-pressure trough will bring showers and isolated thunderstorms to city from Saturday, says Observatory
The sun is out, but don’t put away your umbrella just yet – the rain will be back by the weekend.
More than 100mm fell on parts of Hong Kong during Tuesday’s red-alert rainstorm, which led to flooding in the New Territories and a fallen tree on the city’s streets.
“For most parts of Hong Kong there was about 70mm of rainfall recorded, and in some locations in Sha Tin and Sai Kung, it exceeded 115mm,” Hong Kong Observatory scientific officer Chan Yan-chun said.
And while sunny skies returned to Hong Kong on Wednesday, as the humidity drops and temperatures stay at about 29 degrees Celsius, a low-pressure trough is forecast to drench the city again from Sunday.
“For the rest of this week, we will be affected by a fresh easterly air stream, which will weaken during the weekend, so showery activity is expected to increase over the region,” Chan said.
“Then there will be a trough of lower pressure which will bring thundery showers to Guangdong over the next week. Starting from Saturday there will be a few showers and isolated thunderstorms in Hong Kong.”
The forecast is bad news for the Cheung Chau Bun Festival, which is expected to attract more than 60,000 people after last year’s festival was cancelled due to heavy rain.
Chan said it was hard to tell whether the downpour on Sunday and Monday would be as heavy as Tuesday’s storms, but at this point he expected it would be lighter.
Temperatures are expected to stay relatively stable over the next week, hovering between 24 and 30 degrees with about 70 to 95 per cent humidity.
