Early in the Year

Hmm. This is a rather worrying trend and probably lends more weight to the Global Warming theorists.

Typhoon Chanchu is on its way towards the China mainland by way of Hong Kong. Last year, the first typhoon to hit China wasn't until late July so having one in late May seems extremely early in the season. Helpfully the Tropical Storm Risk forecast says "TSR raises its forecast and anticipates the 2006 Northwest Pacific typhoon season will see activity slightly above average."

Typhoon Chanchu is already a pretty nasty one - it's already hit the Philippines as a Cat 2 and TSR is predicting it will be a Cat 4 by the time it gets to Hong Kong. It's currently showing as coming at Hangzhou in about 6 days time which would usually mean that it's going to miss us by a mile - not sure how they predict the track but last year, every storm that they said was going to hit us in 5 days time missed us by a long way. It's the ones they say are going to miss us by a long way that you need to worry about.