HONG KONG has marked its longest black rainstorm warning and put into force the highest-level alert on Friday, with much of the city suffering the impact of the heaviest rain in more than a century.
The severe weather hit the densely populated city of 7.5 million on Thursday night.
As of Friday morning, authorities urged the public to seek safe shelter as the flash floods forced authorities to suspend schools and submerged metro stations, which trapped drivers on roads.
The Hong Kong Observatory recorded an hourly rainfall of 158.1 millimeters just before midnight on Thursday, making it the highest on record since 1884.
The extreme conditions caught residents by surprise as it happened just days after Hong Kong witnessed its strongest typhoon in five years.
The record-breaking rainfall was brought by Typhoon Haikui, a tropical cyclone formed over the Pacific Ocean on August 28 before it started moving west toward central Taiwan.
The typhoon has killed at least two people and displaced thousands of others.
