Hong Kong officially recorded its highest temperature in 142 years on Sunday, as the arrival of Typhoon Dolphin triggered intense heat across the region. The Hong Kong Observatory reported a peak of 36.9C at its headquarters, marking the city's highest official temperature since record-keeping began in 1884. This figure surpasses the previous record of 36.6C, which was set on August 22, 2017, just before the arrival of Typhoon Hato.
While the observatory's headquarters serve as the city's official reference point, other areas of the dense financial hub experienced even higher temperatures. A weather station located in Sheung Shui, in the northern part of the city, logged a temperature of 39.8C. This is the highest reading recorded in Hong Kong since the introduction of automatic weather stations in the 1980s.
The extreme conditions were driven by the outer subsiding air of Typhoon Dolphin, which moved towards the vicinity of Zhejiang province and inland. Forecasters warned that the system would continue to bring extremely hot weather to the territory from Sunday through Tuesday. In response to the dangerous conditions, the observatory issued a “very hot weather warning,” advising residents to stay hydrated and avoid vigorous outdoor physical activity.
Typhoon Dolphin made landfall on the Chinese mainland, approximately 1,000km (620 miles) north-east of Hong Kong, near Yuhuan in Zhejiang province at about 5:30pm (0930 GMT) on Sunday. The storm, which caused mass flight cancellations and evacuations along the east coast of China, brought maximum sustained winds of 94mph (151 km/h) near its centre, making it equivalent to a category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Scientists have noted that human-driven climate change is contributing to the increased frequency and intensity of such extreme heat events globally.
