Typhoon

For the past few weeks, the weather in Suzhou has been beautiful....thanks mostly to a string of typhoons that have passed to the East in the China Sea.  Well, finally there has come a typhoon not content to pass by at sea.  Typhoon Haikui is the circular cloud just right-of-center in the photo above.  That is a satellite photo from early this morning....just before Haikui was to make landfall to the South of Shanghai.

Suzhou is not on path to take a direct hit.  Even if we were, we are far enough inland to be sheltered from the apocalyptic effects.  The tidal surge could not come this far inland and the winds would be slowed over the distance from Shanghai.  (All traffic is slowed between Suzhou and Shanghai.)

That said, the weather has become a bit nasty.  Yesterday, Tuesday, was a morning of clear blue skies again.  By the evening, the rain had come and was at times falling in buckets.  (Unfortunately, the buckets came at the time I was riding my bike home from work.  Luckily, the Good Lord looks after children and idiots.)  By this morning the rains were steady and the winds were gusting.  Both rain and wind intensified as the day went on.  Nowhere near tornado like winds.  But strong enough to have killed my favorite umbrella.  Strong enough, also, that on the trip home from work (in a car) we could see many trees knocked down along the roads.  (To put this in perspective....many of the trees that line the roads are transplanted from other places within the past year or two. One can see, from the toppled trees, that they have not yet developed much of a root system to keep them upright.)

Tonight we stay in our apartment.  Outside the winds howl and the rains pelt.  But nothing dangerous.  It sounds like the winds of a July thunderstorm or January blizzard.   Only it has been steady for the last 12 or 16 hours.  Elsewhere in China, there are people and places taking the brunt of this typhoon's impact much more strongly than we are.  Mudslides and high waters.  Prayers for those people tonight.