Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Typhoon Whew...

We're still here- Typhoon Wipha passed fairly uneventfully in Shanghai during the middle of the night. I was more disturbed by Typhoon Phil who kept jumping in and out of bed when he couldn't sleep. Babe- top tip: next time you smother a sneeze outside our bedroom door, forcing it instead to come out as some sort of strangled howl, can you please stick around long enough as I am ripped terrified from my peaceful slumber to reassure me that there is not actually a maniac outside our bedroom?

[that's quite possible the longest sentence I have ever written... ah to hell with it, it stays]

But back to Wipha:

Typhoon Wipha made landfall in eastern China on Wednesday, knocking out power and water supplies to tens of thousands of residents, but promptly lost strength as it travelled inland.

Forecaster Tropical Storm Risk downgraded Wipha to a category one typhoon that would weaken further into a tropical storm as it headed north towards Nanjing.

Its projection showed the eye of the storm passing some 250 km (155 miles) to the west of China's financial hub, Shanghai, within 24 hours.

More than 2 million people had been evacuated in the coastal provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang and Shanghai ahead of what Chinese officials had predicted would be a powerful and destructive typhoon.

Officials reached by Reuters said it was too early to assess damage on the coast, but there were not immediate reports of casualties. Sometimes such reports take hours before being released by state media.

The typhoon made landfall at the border of Zhejiang and Fujian -- just where Typhoon Saomai hit last year killing hundreds.
--Reuters (read full article here)
For the time being there is still a lot of windy rain, and it's not a fun day to venture out in to.

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