Whether 1845 or 2025, Some Things in Singapore Never Change

In just minutes, water had rushed down the steps to the basement shops at Liat Towers in Orchard Road, inundating a Starbucks cafe, Wendy's burger joint and Massimo Dutti clothing store on Dec 23, 2011.

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Customers waded through knee-deep water or stepped on chairs to get to drier ground, as 152.8mm of rain — half of what December typically got in the entire month — lashed Orchard Road over three hours that day.

Not only Liat Towers, but the basement shops at Lucky Plaza were hit too, by what national water agency PUB called "ponding".

It drew a biting retort in Parliament the next month from then Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, who said: "PUB should not have used the word 'ponding'. As far as I am concerned, I call a spade a spade. A flood is a flood."

Be it ponding or flooding, the weather is an evergreen topic in Singapore.

Reading through some of the earliest editions of The Straits Times, one imagines the British editors and readers of the paper sweating profusely as they lamented the heat.

The anguish can be felt in editorials like the one published in July 1864 that moaned: "The present season has been beyond all doubt the most trying that has been experienced in Singapore in the memory of the oldest residents."

In 1927, an editorial noted that the last three days had been "oppressively" hot. "Every day is a Sun-day, yet without Sunday's corresponding advantages."