The sky bruises at the same time each day in Angeles City. Then the rain comes. The weather is so similar – steamy heat, then rain and evening relief – that it can seem as though time is circular, and the same day recurs. It can seem that life in this Philippine city, north of Manila, is lived on a vast wheel of actions without consequences. But that would be wrong. Children are conceived and born, and they grow older.

In Batanes, the northernmost islands of the Philippines, a small indigenous population routinely survives the most violent storms in the world. But in an era of unprecedented weather disturbances, can centuries-old methods of adaptation survive modernization and economic struggle?