Sunday, 36.9C. Tai Po. Hottest day since the Observatory started keeping records in 1884, 142 years ago. A typhoon called Dolphin sat offshore and squeezed the air like a lid on a pot instead of blowing the heat out. Everyone felt it. The market uncles under Sham Shui Po's canopies were pouring water on their own arms just to keep moving stock. My noodle stall does double the ice on a normal summer day. Sunday we ran out by 3pm.

Here's the bit nobody in government wants to say out loud: heat kills more people in this city than typhoons do, and typhoons get the No.8 signal, the school closures, the whole show. A record heat day gets a headline and a reminder to drink water. There's no citywide cooling centre network, no heat signal that stops outdoor work the way a black rainstorm does. The libraries and community halls that double as shelter exist because someone's air-con happened to be running, not because there's a plan. Construction workers, delivery riders, the aunties selling fruit on Fa Yuen Street, they're the ones out in it, and the response is basically "we've noted the record." One-forty-two years of data and the government still treats 36.9C the same as a warm Tuesday.