Erie Night Skies

As Midwesterners and new people in any strange location, you can't help but avoid fixating somewhat on the weather. On average Hong Kong is much hotter than Kansas City. It never freezes. It never snows. It just never gets that cold.

In many ways, living in Hong Kong is like what I pictured living in San Francisco would be - constantly about the same temperature and constantly humid. I remember the pictures of San Francisco Bay that they would show in text books or in the movies would be either A) sunny or B) misty and foggy. I don't remember any pictures of Hong Kong from my childhood (or adulthood for that matter). It existed in a realm beyond my exposure, but it comforts me to think of Hong Kong as being like San Francisco. Hong Kong is quickly becoming a place that we know and are enjoying.

Last night I took the picture of the I. M. Pei building shown at the bottom of the page, as visible from my office window. On the web, I found weather observations from Hong Kong taken last night. What's cool about these statistics is that they show basically what I was seeing out my window. When the relative humidity is high (need a definition?) the air is almost completely full of water molecules, so we feel "sticky" and it can get foggy. If you take a look at the weather observations from last night, you will see that as the "height" of the different readings from around the city goes up, the relative humidity ("RH") seems to decrease from a humidity of 92% at 165 meters above ground to 3% at more than 16,000 meters. As straight forward as I know the science to be, I find the reality of a foggy night sky illuminated by a beautiful building to be breathtakingly captivating.

Observation time: 02082000 HKT (GMT+8)

Station         : Hong Kong

1000 hPa height :   165 m  Temp/dew pt:  17/ 16 C  RH:  92 %  Wind: 105/ 6 m/s

925  hPa height :   831 m  Temp/dew pt:  17/ 16 C  RH:  92 %  Wind: 125/10 m/s

850  hPa height :  1550 m  Temp/dew pt:  15/  5 C  RH:  51 %  Wind: 135/ 4 m/s

700  hPa height :  3180 m  Temp/dew pt:   9/-17 C  RH:  14 %  Wind: 260/ 7 m/s

500  hPa height :  5880 m  Temp/dew pt:  -7/-45 C  RH:   2 %  Wind: 255/18 m/s

400  hPa height :  7560 m  Temp/dew pt: -21/-42 C  RH:  13 %  Wind: 260/26 m/s

300  hPa height :  9650 m  Temp/dew pt: -32/-55 C  RH:   8 %  Wind: 240/37 m/s

250  hPa height : 10920 m  Temp/dew pt: -41/-62 C  RH:   8 %  Wind: 245/38 m/s

200  hPa height : 12400 m  Temp/dew pt: -52/-73 C  RH:   5 %  Wind: 240/37 m/s

150  hPa height : 14200 m  Temp/dew pt: -63/-83 C  RH:   4 %  Wind: 250/31 m/s

100  hPa height : 16610 m  Temp/dew pt: -77/-96 C  RH:   3 %  Wind: 280/25 m/s

Hong Kong seems at this stage of its weather year to be in a constant state of humidity at ground level. Yesterday Eric and I bought a dehumidifier; the best purchase we've made.



Here is the building on a bright day...