A historical re-analysis of the calamitous midget typhoon passing through Hong Kong on 18 September 1906 and its storm surge impact to Hong Kong

Abstract

A typhoon passed through Hong Kong suddenly and unexpectedly on 18 September 1906 (the “Typhoon 1906”) and had a disastrous impact on Victoria Harbour and its surroundings in just a couple of hours. Since the year 1906 was the “Bingwu” year in the Chinese calendar, the typhoon is also known historically as the “Bingwu Typhoon”. Tremendous loss of lives and property resulted, and the shipping and fishing communities were devastated. Two mysteries arising from this calamitous typhoon have existed to date: 1) Why the Hong Kong Observatory was not able to provide any forewarning? 2) whether the storm surge reported in some contemporary records is entirely credible? This paper will focus on both of these.

In this paper, we re-analyse historical weather observations recorded in various historical documents and estimate the possible storm size, intensity and track of Typhoon 1906 using tropical cyclone models. Based on the re-analyses, the storm surges, storm tides and wave heights in Hong Kong are also estimated using storm surge and wave models. The results reveal that Typhoon 1906 was a midget typhoon, with a radius of maximum winds of 11 km or smaller, during its passage through Hong Kong. This explains why it was technically impossible for a forewarning to be given at that time when real-time weather observations from ships, meteorological satellites and radars were non-existent. We also estimate that the maximum storm surges (storm tides) in Hong Kong were not higher than 0.82 m (2.43 mCD) and 1.98 m (4.15 mCD) in Victoria Harbour and Tolo Harbour respectively. These figures are found to be limited by the intensity and the storm size of the typhoon. Therefore, we conclude that the previously documented storm surge figures are not supported by the present study.