Another COVID-Casuality - The Traditional Hong Kong Typhoon Holiday

Hong Kongers like to complain about the weather at least as much as the British do. It is either too hot, too humid, too rainy or too cold, possibly all of it at once.

The only weather condition traditionally beloved almost universally is the occasional Typhoon (the western Pacific equivalent to a Hurricane). Hong Kong’s weather agency, the Hong Kong Observatory, issues warning signals if a tropical storm approaches the city. Signal T1 means a tropical cyclone is in the radius of 800 km (500 miles), T3 means that gusts can reach a speed of 110 km/h (68 mph) and signal T8 or higher means wind is expected to blow with sustained wind speeds of above 63 km/h (39 mph).

Typhoon signal 8 also means that you stay put where you are. If T8 is about to be raised during the day, public institutions, shops and restaurants shop, and business send their staff home, before public transportation shuts down.

If the signal is still in force in the morning, employees do not require to report back to work, before the signal is lowered to 3.

Now it might seem morbid that people like T8 so much, but Hong Kong is well prepared for an occasional Typhoon. Even severe storms rarely claim victims other than trees, roof constructions, and the occasional overconfident surfer who somewhat had it coming.

For the rest of HK in good old pre-COVID times, T8 just meant a bit of an adventure and a nice little extra holiday to sleep-in, read a book, or to Netflix and chill.

Just like handshakes, happy hours, and many other things this beloved tradition has been a thing of the past.

The sense of adventure somehow got a bit old, after operating in a full-blown pandemic mode for more than half a year. So the Typhoon rarely is the breath of fresh air it once felt like. And being fully WFH enabled means that your traditional T8 holiday is now just another day in the home office.

While the official discussion on how to interpret the “employees do not have to report for work during the duration of a hoisted T8 signal, hasn’t concluded yet (see this article in the South China Morning Post), there is not much of an argument to be made in favor of not working from home.

Even the Typhoons seem to have realized that they lost their magic appeal. Instead of forming over the Philippine Sea and slowly edging towards our beloved Hong Kong SAR over the course of multiple days, they now form spontaneously directly over the South China Sea.

Welcome to the New Normal.