Hong Kong - Hong Kong has enjoyed its warmest Lunar New Year on record with temperatures on the first day of the Year of the Pig climbing above 25 degrees Celsius, weathermen said Monday.
The temperature on Sunday afternoon in the territory of 6.8 million hit 25.3 degrees Celsius, breaking the previous record of 24.6 degrees Celsius set in 1982, the Hong Kong Observatory said.
The hot weather, accompanied by unseasonally high levels of humidity of between 85 and 90 per cent, is expected to continue into the middle of the week before cooler weather sets in.
Temperatures during the Chinese New Year holiday are traditionally chilly in Hong Kong, which sits in a sub-tropical belt on the southern fringe of China, before rising from March onwards.
However, global warming has seen winter temperatures climb in recent years along with the arrival of a number of species of migratory birds which normally spend winter further south.
