Last year (2024), Hong Kong got hit by 7 tropical cyclones. It's about the right amount, but |not the right time.| Possibly due to climate change, there were tropical cyclones |even in November.| Tropical cyclones are cool. The inner geography nerd of me really like this weather system. In this unusual situation, that's when I thought, "Hmm, maybe I should draw them."
And that's exactly what I did.
Toraji is the first typhoon I drew. It's simply because her name is kinda cute.
She is holding a watering can, gently watering the land Hong Kong. This is paying respect to what she did as a typhoon - |Not really being much, but brought us a few days of shower.|
Realistically, this name is probably in Japanese, but I don't read Japanese, so what I did was imagine in Chinese. The Chinese name of "Toraji" is "桃芝". It's not really meaningful in Chinese either, so I just took each character literally. '桃' means peach. '芝' means cheese. Therefore, on her head, there are peach blossoms and cheese.
Next up, we have Man-Yi. Man-Yi was a typhoon that arrived a few days after Toraji.
Once again, this wasn't that strong of a typhoon. However, Man-Yi brought |A LOT OF RAIN.| That's why she is illustrated as a lady, with waterfall coming from straight under her dress.
Physical typhoon impact aside, the Chinese name of "Man-Yi", "萬宜", is actually a place in Hong Kong. This place is called "萬宜水庫", "High Island Reservoir". It is, as the name suggest, a reservoir. In my mind, a reservoir is kind of this big pond, with its own ecosystem. So Man-Yi looks pale in the drawing, with some greenery and rocks.
This is also where I came up with the term "Typhoon Posting". It's basically humanizing these typhoons.
At this point, the 2024 Pacific Typhoon Season is over. The sea is too cold for energetic low pressure cells to form, so we can take a break.
Wutip is our first typhoon of the year 2025! |She is depressed.|
She formed really close to Hong Kong, within 800km away. Because she was already so close to the land, she couldn't really get much more powerful before going up to land. In case you don't know typhoons, |they stop gaining energy once they leave the water.| Since Wutip formed so close to the land, she spent most of her life as a "Tropical Depression", a classification of tropical cyclones. That's why she is depressed.
Her name doesn't make sense in English, because it's in Chinese. The Chinese name of "Wutip", "蝴蝶", means butterfly. So I gave her butterfly wings and a general fairy outlook.
Typhoon Posting is so much fun! I love trying to draw them with personalities. We are for sure gonna deal with more typhoons this year, so you should look forward to more drawings!