Typhoon who?

Last Wednesday was all very exciting, I got treated to my first 'Typhoon Day'. Our school shut down for the day in anticipation of what the news media was referring to as a 'Super Typhoon' which I don't mind saying was a little scary, given that we live on the 19th floor of an 18 month old building with ceiling to floor cracks in the walls already!!

As I checked the news from time to time, the storm was called 'the biggest and most destructive Typhoon to hit Shanghai in 10 years'. There was one in the 90's that killed about 300 people, can't remember the name. We were hearing that 2 million people had been evacuated from certain areas around Shanghai and when we saw the satellite picture from edge to edge it stretched from the top of Taiwan to level with Beijing. I thought, 'bloody hell, that's big enough to blow a few buildings down in little ol' Suzhou!'. So we waited, and waited, and waited. I kept hearing that the storm would hit Shanghai 'later'. Once I'd heard this same story for about 12 or so hours, I started to get suspicious. At about 5pm on the day it was supposed to hit, Andrew and I went out for a walk and there was certainly a bit of wind, but that was pretty much it. In the end we got some rain (no more than a usual day) and wind that wasn't even threatening to the wheelie bins. Very disappointing. But the day off was great!