Photos: Hong Kong paralysed by extreme floods from Typhoon Haikui

The Asian financial hub of Hong Kong was drenched by the heaviest rain since records began 140 years ago, killing one person and injuring 83, as unusually wet weather caused by a typhoon brought more disruption to southern China.

Videos showed cascades of water surging down steep hillsides, flooding waist-deep in narrow streets and inundating malls, metro stations and tunnels.

The extreme weather also brought chaos to the nearby Chinese city of Shenzhen, a tech hub of more than 17.7 million people, with business and transport links across the economically important Pearl River Delta severely hit.

“I’ve never seen scenes like this before. Even during previous typhoons, it was never this severe. It’s quite terrifying,” said Hong Kong nurse Connie Cheung, 65.

The torrential rain was brought by Haikui, a typhoon that made landfall in the Chinese province of Fujian on Tuesday. Although it weakened to a tropical depression, its slow-moving clouds have dumped huge volumes of precipitation on areas still soaked by rain from a super typhoon a week earlier.