Typhoon Lagoon 8

I woke up early on Wednesday morning because I knew our field trip to the Lions Nature Centre in Sai Kung would be canceled if there was a tropical cyclone warning level of 3. So I found the web page for the Hong Kong SAR Observatory and saw the number 8 with winds from the southeast. I thought to myself "Gee, doesn't that mean that school is canceled"? And of course it was. People kept calling me to make sure that I knew. I felt sorry for the credit teachers because it's the last week of summer school and they really can't afford to lose a day. But as for me I stayed in bed all morning reading a book, had an extended lunch in the cafeteria, and then worked during the afternoon on lesson plans. I realised that the poor night staff, who are on from 8:30 pm or so, were also stuck there all day because no one was coming into work. Poor William and Moon. I've been here so long that I know all the night staff and they all know me. I will miss them.
There were very few things going on outside. The wind was roaring and there were periods of pretty serious rain. Sometimes the rain went sideways. There was also hail and, I swear it because I'm from Ottawa and I would know, snow. Little bits of flying white water that fell more slowly than rain. Very, very interesting. By the evening the typhoon has been downgraded to a tropical storm and we went to the shopping mall for dinner. Classy. I think the eye hit landfall around 180 km away from Hong Kong. We found out that street signs has been blown over uprooting the stones from the sidewalks and scaffolding had fallen off a building just down the street from us.