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efore dawn, a fine drizzle drifted down from the cloudsI which had banked together, covering Hong Kongwith a solid, grey overcast. The rainfall was not enough torecord - indeed, no measurable rain was to fall for the rest ofthe month - but in retrospect Tuesday, 1 January 1884 doesnot seem to have been a particularly pleasant day. At 10 am,it was 14°C, with 75 per cent relative humidity and a stiffnorth easterly wind. Later, the temperature was to rise to amaximum of 15.3°C. These figures, apparently insignificantin themselves, were important to two men in a partiallycompletednew building on Mount Elgin on the KowloonPeninsula: Dr. William Doberck, the Government Astronomer,and his First Assistant, Frederick Figg. By recordingtheir observations of the weather on that chill, blustery NewYear's Day, Doberck and Figg formally began the work ofthe Hong Kong Observatory.The records were not, of course, the first to be kept of theweather in Hong Kong. Such work had predated theestablishment of the colony - and some of the earliestnotations had been made before Doberck and Figg wereborn. Clark Abel, a surgeon, had accompanied the Amherstmission to Peking in 1816, and reported in his Narrative of aJourney into the Interior of China:On the 14th of July [1816] when this [meteorological] tablecommences, the Alceste had left Hong Kong sound. The meanof our observations } whilst we remained there, from the 10th tothe 13th, gave for the barometer 29.64 [inches], thermometer81.5 [°F] prevailing wind SW. The south westerly windswere usually accompanied by hazy weather, the northerlywinds by clear weather, with occasional squalls, attended bythunder and lightning.Doberck and Figg had arrived in Hong Kong in thesummer of 1883 - 67 years after Abel's visit - with acommission to establish: meteorological observations inaccordance with the United Kingdom requirements of afirst-class observatory; a time service; and magneticobservations. Curiously, this original programme for the18