Typhoon Fanapi

I went to bed last night convinced that school would be canceled. Like a child, I eagerly anticipated that early morning phone call telling me to go back to sleep. I looked forward to a quiet day in the house with the girls, doing art projects and watching movies, and staring out the huge windows of our living room to watch the gale force winds and the lashing rains.

Alas, by this morning Typhoon Fanapi had turned into Tropical Depression Fanapi. As near as I can tell, a tropical depression is much like a human depression. It seems that the sun climbs back into bed, pulls the covers over its head, and cries a little bit. Rather than the excitement of flash floods, we sometimes had enough raindrops to warrant an umbrella. Probably nice in the end - I was still able to see some friends, get Annika and I out of the house, and allow Lilly her regular Tuesday playdate with Michael.

The weather here is taking some getting used to. While Shanghai felt suitably foreign when we first arrived (and to this day, for that matter), the weather never felt particularly strange. Weather in Shanghai seemed not unlike the weather in St. Louis or Kansas City. The middle Mid-West may receive a bit more snow and Shanghai may be more damp in the winters, but the temperatures and general amounts and times of rainfall remained constant. April showers brought May flowers, July and August brought high temperatures and thick humidity, and October made you want to spend all of your time out of doors.

The climate in Shenzhen is sub-tropical. I will allow you weather crazies to do your own research on what exactly that means. But from what I can tell, it means that we have two seasons. We currently reside in typhoon season, which I will describe as super-hot (temps generally in the upper 80s to mid 90s), amazingly humid, and with an intense sun. Our new house sits on the top of a small but quite steep hill, and I have yet to finish that climb without making my shirt smelly and having sweat drip from underneath my sunglasses. Rain falls nearly every day, and in bucket-fulls. You can always tell when it will rain, though. The clouds move in and the wind picks up noticeably. At that point, you've got about 5 minutes to take cover. The rain will last between 5 and 60 minutes, so either have an umbrella or a book with you at all times. On weekends like this last one, no rain falls and the temperature continues to rise until even a drink outside at 11:00 at night becomes nearly unbearable. No surprise to learn that we were in the path of a typhoon. Today, the temperatures were quite comfortable - I'd guess in the mid-70s. But no sweaters, please. That humidity still rides high.

I understand that summer here will eventually end, probably in another month or so. And at that point, the rainfall will drop to next to nothing but temperatures will fall only into comfortable to cool range. Apparently, winter in Shenzhen is lovely and provides ample time to use the lovely terrace on the back of our house.