Hong Kong, Shenzhen deluged by heaviest rain

Hong Kong, Sept 10:  The heaviest rain since records began 140 years ago drenched Asian financial hub Hong Kong on Friday, killing two people and injuring more than 100, media reported, as unusually wet weather caused by typhoons brought more disruption to southern China.
Videos showed water cascading down steep hillsides in the former British colony, flooding waist-deep in narrow streets, and inundating malls, metro stations and tunnels. The extreme weather also brought chaos to the nearby Chinese city of Shenzhen, a tech hub of more than 17.7 million people, with business and transport links across the economically important Pearl River Delta severely hit. “I’ve never seen scenes like this before. Even during previous typhoons, it was never this severe. It’s quite terrifying,” said Hong Kong assistant nurse Connie Cheung, 65. The torrential rain was brought by Haikui, a typhoon that made landfall in the Chinese province of Fujian on Tuesday. Although it later weakened to a tropical depression, its slow-moving clouds have dumped huge volumes of precipitation on areas still soaked by rain from a super typhoon a week earlier. Hong Kong’s weather bureau issued its highest “black” rainstorm warning early on Friday. It said more than 200 mm (7.9 inches) of rain was recorded on Hong Kong’s main island, the Kowloon district and the northeastern part of the city’s New Territories from late on Thursday.