Public land, air and sea traffic were gradually back on service, as tropical storm Kammuri is moving away from Macao later on Wednesday.

According to the Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau (SMG), the gale signal No. 8 hoisted at 7:00 a.m. local time might be lowered to No. 3 later today, as Kammuri moved further away from Macao and toward the west coast of the Guangdong Province, which resulted in weaker wind force in the city.

Air Macao, the local flagship airline, has announced that it will put its flights back on service starting from 8:00 p.m. local time, but some of them were still canceled. Xinhua correspondents also saw that some of the bus service had started operating as the storm slowly died down.

However, the heavy downpour has led to waterlogging in some old districts of the Macao Peninsula, where people have to wade across the streets and some shops were forced to close.

The storm has also caused some minor accidents as the strong wind dragged down many fascia and trees. In a district of the city, a shop's fascia was blown down by the wind and damaged a car parked below it.

Bad weather also forced the authorities of some local institutions and schools to cancel their exams scheduled for today. Even local prison has announced that they will suspend today's prisoner visiting arrangement.

The SMG forecast that Thursday will be cloudy with gentle to fresh gusty winds and heavy showers at times.

(Xinhua News Agency August 7, 2008)