World weather news

World weather news, January 1996

1st
Two New Year revellers froze to death in Moscow when they collapsed in icy streets after heavy drinking session. 25 people had been taken to hospital with frostbite, as New Year temperatures dropped to about -3F.
2nd
Floods caused by heavy rains have killed 14 people, left at least 11 missing and forced about 120,000 others to flee their homes in Indonesia's northern province of Aceh.
2nd
Heavy snows in the main sanctuaries of the Monarch butterfly in central Mexico have killed millions of the distinctive orange and black insects, environmentalists said.
3rd
A tornado touched down in suburban Miami, damaging 100 homes, tearing down power lines and causing minor injuries.
3rd
Days of freezing weather have prevented several thousand tourists returning to work from Christmas and New Year holidays on the popular East Friesian islands off northern Germany. Temperatures have remained below zero for several days across northern Germany, and at night have dipped as low as -24C in eastern Germany. Ice 15 cm thick trapped 25 trawlers - most of Germany's biggest fishing fleet - in the port of Friedrichskoog, forcing some owners to hack channels in the harbour to prevent their wooden boats being crushed.
3rd
Drivers in much of the United States braved icy conditions after a storm left up to 10 inches of snow from Missouri to Ohio to parts of the Northeast, and sent the mercury plunging to -28F in Minnesota.
6th
Very cold in Northeast USA as gusts of arctic air also forced readings in much of the Plains and Great Lakes regions into the single-digits (degF).
6th
Heavy rains and melting snow are causing the worst flooding in Romania in 25 years. Flooding rivers entered some reservoirs, tainting drinking water to several cities.
7th
The largest snowstorm in at least two years hit the middle Atlantic area and moved northeast toward New England. Airports were closed. Snow fell at the rate of 5cm/hr in New York. Snowstorm resulted from the meeting of warm, moist air from the south and a cold arctic airmass from Canada.
6th-7th
At least 10 people died and 200 were injured in traffic accidents over the weekend as freezing rain turned most of western Germany's roads into ice rinks. Authorities reported more than 1,500 accidents in the regional states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia alone, as salt-spreading trucks found they could not spread fast enough to prevent roads freezing over a second time.
7th
Heavy rain left four people dead in southeastern Brazil, the latest casualties of persistent bad weather that has killed at least 20 people in the past few days. Fifteen people died last week in the city of Sao Paulo and 7,000 in the state were left homeless as a result of heavy rains which began Wednesday. Flooding also brought Rio de Janeiro to a halt.
8th
By evening, a record 30.3 inches of snow had fallen in Philadelphia, 22 inches in New York City, and 18 inches in Washington, D.C. About 200 people were stranded for six hours through the night on an unheated Washington commuter train stalled by the snowstorm that paralyzed the capital area. 28ins of snow fell in Kentucky. Schools, offices and roads closed in the northeast. It was one of the snowiest storms in the NE this century. Up to 43ins fell in west Virginia. 41 died. The storm cost an estimated $585 million in insured-property damage.
8th
Snow piled up to 3 feet deep from New England to Virginia; one of the highest snowfall measures was 37 ins in the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia.
8th
Ski conditions in southern Spain, where a lack of snow forced the cancellation of last year's World Championships, are again worrying the sport's governing body as it prepares to try again next month at the same venue.
8th
Cold in Florida; temperatures were as many as 20degF below normal in some parts of the state this morning. Tallahassee had a low of 24F, with a wind chill near zero.
8th
Heavy rains flooded main streets in Lisbon, Portugal, and caused power cuts in downtown areas, bringing the capital to a virtual standstill.
9th
The Indonesian capital's worst floods in 20 years started to subside but hundreds of Jakarta residents remained sheltering in safe areas, facing the debris and health hazards from the deluge.
10th
Tropical cyclone Bonita, packing 120 miles per hour winds, bore down on Madagascar and residents reinforced homes and moved away from rivers.
10th
Cubans, more accustomed to complaining about hot and humid conditions, are shivering in a cold snap this week. 'Temperatures will remain chilly today with maximum of 20 to 23 Celsius,' said Wednesday's weather forecast in the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma. This was a 'cold, cold, cold early morning,'.
10th
More than two feet of snow felled trees and stranded motorists while a powerful blizzard blew across northern Japan for a third day.
11th
Floods in central and northern Portugal over the past week have killed 10 people and made 1,050 homeless.
11th
Eleven people died in the past three days during an unseasonal cold snap in Guatemala, where temperatures in some parts of the country plunged below freezing.
12th
A new snowstorm caused big problems in the Northeast USA again, closing the federal government in the nation's capital, snarling transportation and knocking out electricity. Up to 12 ins of snow fell in southwest Virginia, western Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
12th
Heavy snowfalls swept Iran, and some regions were hit by the worst conditions in 50 years. Airports at Isfahan in the center of the country and Shiraz in the south have been closed. Shiraz, Iran's third largest city, was buried under 20 inches of snow, with conditions worsening and all roads into the city blocked. 17 people died.
12th
Torrential rains unleashed floods and landslides along France's southern coast. Several days of constant, heavy rain, along with snow melt from warm Alpine weather, combined to swell rivers and saturate the ground.
17th
Near-blizzard conditions blasted the Rockies and northern Plains of the USA, giving up to 24ins of snow, while winds up to 110 mph caused sand storms in Texas. 17 were injured in a 23-vehicle chain reaction crash on Interstate 10 due to blowing sand. Fog was blamed for a 30-car pileup on Interstate 43 north of Milwaukee.
18th
In North Dakota snowstorms dropped a foot of snow, spawned by a powerful Arctic frontal system pushing out warm, moist air and driving down temperatures along the front by more than 40 degF in a matter of hours.
18th
A rare heavy snowfall blanketed Jerusalem and swept through other parts of Israel and the West Bank Thursday. A trace of snow falls nearly every year in the holy city but usually melts within an hour.
18th
Tornadoes tore off roofs in Arkansas and Texas, where winds gusted to 110 mph. A man and a woman were killed when the roof of a store collapsed in Anthony, Texas.
20th
Tens of thousands of evacuated residents in northeast Pennsylvania started returning to their homes late Saturday after dikes held back rising waters in the Susquehanna River. The threat of flooding - prompted by heavy rains and melting snow during unusually warm weather on Friday - moved downstream, however.
20th
The Icebox Festival in the northern Minnesota town of International Falls was postponed - because of the cold. As temperatures dipped to -42F, organizers of the annual winter festival - its highlight is a frozen turkey bowling contest - said they would wait for a milder day.
20th-21st
Seven people died in floods in central Mozambique at the weekend after heavy rains along the road which links Zimbabwe with the Mozambican port of Beira. Weekend rainfall in Chimoio was 95 inches and in Beira at least 45 inches of rain was recorded. Nine people died in a cyclone that hit northern and central Mozambique last week.
22nd
Thousands of Mexicans have fallen sick with breathing difficulties, eye problems, headaches and nausea as Mexico City's smog emergency entered its third day. Despite draconian measures including curbs on factory output, gasoline sales and car driving, smog levels in the city were still well above World Health Organization (WHO) safe limits.
22nd
GOES-9, one of a new generation of U.S. weather satellites, is now over the Pacific Ocean. The satellite has been positioned in orbit 22,300 miles above the equator at 135 degrees west longitude, enabling its cameras to view the western United States, Hawaii, Alaska and much of the Pacific Ocean, NOAA announced.
22nd
Three people have died in heavy rain and snow storms that have paralyzed parts of Spain, cutting power and isolating dozens of villages. The worst affected area was southern Andalusia.
22nd
Severe cold has killed more than 200 people in northern Bangladesh since last month, local officials said. They said temperatures had dropped in places to 39F, the lowest for years. The poor, the old and the homeless were worst affected.
23rd
Four people in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) died when a fierce storm lashed the city, bringing down powerlines and trees and leaving some areas under water. Two people were killed by landslides during the storm, which hit Rio with winds of up to 60 miles per hour on Monday evening.
24th
At least five people died and hundreds were evacuated from flooded homes as relentless rain and thunderstorms battered Morocco and submerged large areas. Torrential rains since Sunday have wreaked havoc with public services. A train was derailed as tracks were buried beneath water and another caught fire Monday because of a short circuit. It was not immediately known what effect the downpour had on agriculture, which had suffered from the worst drought on record in 1995. Meteorologists said the area from Casablanca to Kenitra near Rabat had so far received 1.3 times the annual average amount of rain.
25th
Heavy snowfalls in Hungary over the past two days have halted supply and troop convoys for the U.S. contingent of the NATO Bosnian peacekeeping force. Heavy snowfalls blanketing eastern and central Europe have dumped around 20 inches snow over Hungary making roads difficult and slowing down train traffic.
26th
Snow-slicked runways forced Air France to cancel 50 flights from Charles de Gaulle Airport. Only about 2 inches of snow fell on the Paris region, but it mingled with ice in some areas. Police reported numerous automobile accidents.
26th
Arctic air continued to grip the northern regions of the Midwest USA. Temperatures fell into the minus 40s in northern Minnesota in the morning.
27th
At least 19 people have been killed and hundreds others made homeless by heavy downpours that have swept Morocco this week.
29th
More than two dozen vehicles collided early Monday on Interstate 94 because of blinding snow, closing down the major Chicago-Milwaukee highway, police said. Six injuries were reported. State police said bitterly cold wind chasing a cold front across the Great Lakes region caused white-out conditions.
29th
Flash floods swept through the Herault department in southern France, killing four people and causing significant damage. Three people were reported missing in the flooding around the city of Beziers, triggered by heavy rainstorms which caused three rivers to overflow. Torrential rains also triggered floods on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica during the night, cutting off some roads and submerging highway bridges.
31st
January was an exceptional month in Germany. It seems to have been the driest of the century in Germany as a whole - parts of the NE recorded no precip. at all for the whole month (hence the lack of snow cover and extreme frost penetration). Further, the temp. anomalies for the month varied widely from below -4 degC in the north to an incredible +5.4 degC on the summit of the Feldberg in the Black Forest (persistent anticyclonic inversion weather - overcast and frosty in the plains, mild and sunny in the mountains).
31st
Thousands of Oregonians were without heat early Wednesday after gusting winds knocked down power lines during a bitter cold snap. In Alabama, some streets were under water after heavy rains.
31st
The lowest temperatures in a decade sent shivers through the Midwest and forecasters warned that an even colder Arctic airmass would arrive before the weekend. Chicago has already recorded 23 deaths directly blamed on cold weather. Frigid temperatures froze fire hydrants and coated firefighters with icicles as they battled blazes across the region set off by malfunctioning heaters or fires set by those trying to stay warm. Among the lowest temperatures, Geraldton, Ontario, recorded -49C. Kansas' sole nuclear power plant remained closed after a screen covering a pipe froze, restricting the flow of water from a cooling lake to the plant's nuclear reactor.

World weather news, February 1996

1st
A severe storm over northern Japan dumped more than 22 inches of snow by Thursday evening and another 40 inches could fall before the storm is over, forecasters said.
1st
An estimated 400 people - all of them drunk - have frozen to death in Moscow so far this winter, the Interfax news agency reported. Winter began early in the Russian capital this year with a Nov. 2 snowstorm. There have been no blizzards, but the temperature has remained consistently cold, topping the freezing mark only once at 36 F on Dec. 24. The coldest temperature of the winter so far was -6 F on Jan. 3.
1st
The worst wash of Arctic air in years sent temperatures plummeting to new daily lows from Washington state to Michigan, including -46C Ely, Minn. The Minot, N.Dakota, Air Force base recorded a noon temperature of -33F, with a wind chill of -93F.
1st
A winter storm played havoc with normally temperate Texas as freezing rain covered central and northern parts of the state with a sheet of ice. dt>2nd
-60F at Tower was the lowest ever recorded in the state of Minnesota. Soap bubbles froze instantly and shattered when hitting the ground. People were warned about pierced ears and body parts because metal jewelry can freeze to the flesh. When eggs were cracked on a sidewalk in St. Paul, the whites hardened in 45 seconds, the yolks in just over 3 minutes. Gravediggers used a device that resembles an upside-down bathtub with a torch inside to thaw the ground enough to dig graves.
2nd
Blizzards have killed 42 people in a Tibetan region of China's southwestern Sichuan province in one of the worst snowstorms reported in China for several years.
2nd
On Midwest farms, the ears and tails of newborn cattle are at risk of freezing solid and breaking off in temperatures well below zero.
2nd
3 killed in Texas as a result of icy conditions.
2nd
Scant snow in Anchorage, Alaska, has prompted organizers to cancel the World Championship Sled Dog Race, one of the premier sprint mushing events. (2nd)
3rd
Eight people died and 10 were injured in motorway pile-ups involving at least 20 vehicles just north of Lisbon in thick fog.
3rd
Record low temperatures for February at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, -27F; Des Moines, Iowa, -26F. -54F recorded at Shepherd Bay, North West Territories, in Canada.
4th
One man died and more than 100 people were injured in accidents across the north of Holland after a winter's day of skating turned to chaos. Sub-zero temperatures have frozen hundreds of miles of waterways, attracting tens of thousands of skating-mad Dutch to the ice. At one organized race on the Ijsselmeer around 3,000 people were expected but ten times that number turned up. Skaters travelling at over 20mph collided in dozens of separate incidents.
5th
Early reports from growers indicate that freezing temperatures caused some damage to the Florida citrus crop, especially Valencia oranges.
5th
Flooding and mudslides forced scattered evacuations in northern California and Oregon as strong winter storms swept in from the Pacific.
5th
Record low temperatures for February at Columbus, Georgia, 10F; Elkins, West Virginia, -22F; Meridian, Mississippi, 8F.
6th
From Britain to Yugoslavia, Europe shivered under a thick blanket of snow as freezing temperatures brought chaos to much of the continent. Blizzards trapped over 1,000 drivers in their cars overnight in southern Scotland and brought down power lines across Britain, leaving more than 25,000 homes without electricity. Snow drifted up to six feet deep in places.
6th
Danish government icebreakers went into action for the first time in nearly a decade to clear channels between Jutland and the islands of Funen and Zealand. Another icebreaker was sent to the Oresund channel between Zealand and Sweden, where drifting ice has disrupted high-speed shuttles between Copenhagen and the Swedish port of Malmo.
6th
In France, snow blanketed the northwest regions of Brittany and Normandy, paralyzing numerous roads and prompting authorities to close schools in several areas.
6th
German newspapers said the country was experiencing its coldest winter since 1986-87. The river Elbe in eastern Germany has frozen over, bringing barge traffic to a standstill.
6th
Rough seas, heavy snowfalls and blizzards closed Romania's Black Sea port of Constanta and disrupted River Danube traffic. Belgrade (the 'White City') lived up to its name, lying under more than 18 inches of snow which have severely disrupted traffic and services.
6th
The Vienna daily newspaper Neue Kronen Zeitung reported 33 days of snowfall so far this winter in the Austrian capital and said council trucks had cleared 100 times more snow than last winter.
6th
Portugal is experiencing one of its wettest winters for years with rainfall in many places triple the norm. Floods have killed at least 12 people and made more than 1,000 homeless over the past six weeks. Southern Spain, in the grip of a drought for several years that drained reservoirs, has seen almost continuous rain since December which has ruined crops and flooded homes.
6th
Thousands of tons of dead fish are trapped under the frozen Dnipro River in the Ukraine. Fiercely cold weather along with declining water levels in a central section of the river, Ukraine is suffering from one of its worst winters in decades. Much of the Dnipro has frozen over. The unusually thick layer of ice is forcing the fish into a smaller and smaller space, eventually suffocating them.
7th
A combination of heavy rainfall and melting snow pushed rivers over their banks in Washington and Oregon. Parts of western Washington state have had more than a foot of rainfall in the last few days.
8th
Cairo airport was shut down after severe sandstorms reduced visibility, airport sources said.
9th
Some very cold spots in NW Europe this morning: Twente in Holland had -20.5C and Berlin-Dahlem had -15.2C (the lowest there since Jan 1987).
9th
A storm in Skikda, Algeria's main port for crude oil and petroleum products exports, has badly damaged oil and gas facilities there.
9th
Recent flooding in Morocco has killed 25 people, destroyed 7,200 homes and flooded more than 312,000 acres of agricultural land. Damage to infrastructure was estimated at more than $55 million with roads, bridges, electricity and telephone lines damaged.
7th-9th
Five people were killed and dozens injured in violent storms that lashed France's Atlantic coast this week. Torrential rains and winds of up to 100 miles an hour hit the coast Wednesday, smashing boats, damaging roads and bridges and bringing down power lines.
10th
Heavy rains caused flooding up to six feet deep in parts of Jakarta (Indonesia), immobilizing traffic in and stranding residents in mosques, schools and even rooftops. The runoff from torrential rains that started at midnight overwhelmed the city's network of rivers, many of which are blocked by waste and have been narrowed by construction along their banks. A flood that struck Jakarta last month was the capital's worst in 20 years. It killed 10 people and caused $17.3 million in damage.
10th
Heavy rain has caused flooding in Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho states: 7 died, about 30,000 were evacuated, over 500 roads in Oregon were blocked, where drinking water was running out.
12th
A frost-free morning in Munich, breaking a 48 day run of consecutive airfrosts.
10th-12th
Thousands of rescuers and a fleet of helicopters freed more than 1,500 people who were trapped in cars and buses in drifts up to 6 feet deep by a weekend snowstorm in eastern Ukraine. The hardest-hit area was about 240 miles southeast of Kiev between Dniepropetrovsk and Zaporizhia. Temperatures have averaged 3degF for weeks in Kiev, much of the rest of Ukraine has been frozen since December, in what is the longest such cold spell in more than half a century. Fierce snowstorms on Friday and Saturday caused electric outages across the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, a southern resort region that rarely sees significant snowfall.
15th
50 people have been drowned in a week of floods across half of South Africa. Heavy rain has fallen in the past week over most of the northern and eastern regions of the country, filling dams to over capacity, bursting the banks of rivers and leaving the streets of several major towns awash to car-roof level. Steady rains since December have broken a severe drought that had gripped most of the country.
16th
At least 18 people died this week in flooding from prolonged seasonal rains in northern South Africa, and 43 are missing.
16th
A powerful storm dumped snow along the East Coast of the USA, causing scores of accidents including a train crash outside Washington that left 11 people dead and injured dozens more. It was New York's 12th snowstorm of the season making it the city's second snowiest winter in nearly 50 years.
17th
A giant snow palace with walls 400 yards long, a chapel, restaurant and theater opened to the public Saturday in the Finnish town of Kemi near the Arctic Circle. The castle, partly paid for by European Union regional funds and which local unemployed youth helped to build, has so far consumed 1.059 million cubic feet of snow and cost some $700,000, organizer Seppo Lankinen said in a statement.
18th
Taiwan's military launched a rescue mission on Sunday for 19 crew missing after a Greek-registered cargo ship sank in rough seas.
18th
Snowstorms sweeping the Yangtze River valley grounded air traffic in Shanghai and disrupted train and bus transport, stranding thousands of travellers on China's Lunar New Year holiday.
18th
Heavy snow in parts of Japan disrupted air, road and rail traffic and forced the cancellation of sporting events. The Tokyo Fire Department reported 41 people suffering broken ribs and other minor injuries were taken to hospitals after falling on snow-covered streets or being involved in similar incidents.
19th
A Chinese cargo vessel sank in rough seas in the Taiwan Strait and hopes of finding any of its 30 crew alive faded after rescuers were unable to find any trace of the boat.
19th
Blizzards in northwestern Europe, causing hundreds of highway accidents and forcing more than a thousand motorists to abandon their cars on snow-clogged roads. The storms showed the contrast between countries accustomed to snow and those that are not: In Denmark, 6 feet fell in some places but there were no fatalities, while in the Netherlands, 4 inches of snow brought more than 500 car crashes and two deaths. In Britain, trees felled by high winds disrupted train and road traffic. A motorcyclist died after hitting a fallen tree near Iver, Buckinghamshire. It was the worst snowstorm in the Netherlands since 1985. In the northernmost Dutch provinces of Groningen and Friesland, heavy snow cut off access to many villages. Some schools closed.
20th
Snow fell on much of France, causing an Air France jet to skid off a runway at Charles de Gaulle Airport and creating traffic chaos in Paris. Snow was falling just about everywhere in France except along the Mediterranean coastline and in the south-central regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence.
21st
Snow drifts and ice paralysed much of northern and western France after more than 1,000 people spent the night in emergency shelters after being trapped in the snow. The worst-hit area was around the western city of Caen, in Normandy, where police banned trucks from the roads and appealed to motorists to stay home except in emergencies as crews struggled to sweep away one-metre snow drifts. In the west, storms wrecked fishing boats in the port of Roscoff in Britanny and smashed the harbour pier at Port-en-Bessin in Normandy.
21st
Heavy fog shrouded New York City, causing havoc at the metropolitan area's three major airports and a ferry accident that injured 18 people, officials.
20th-25th
Severe blizzards around 20th caused havoc in N Germany. Many roads became impassable due to blowing snow and severe drifting, isolating many small communities for a time. Daytime temperatures around -5 degC were accompanied by gales gusting up to 130 km/h. At the exposed coastal station, Kap Arkona, a mean windspeed of 60kn was reached. A passenger ferry travelling from Denmark to Rostock was stranded for 18 hours by the combined effect of storms and thickening sea-ice. The blizzards seem to have been the worst in the region since the winter of 1978-79. On 23rd, Sonnenbuehl recorded Germany's lowest minimum of the winter so far with -29.8 degC. Just above the snow -32.6 degC was measured there. Over the weekend, mild SW winds have brought a rapid rise in temperatures with Foehn conditions north of the Alps. At Zwiesel (Bayrischer Wald), a minimum of -17.3 degC was recorded just before the mild air arrived. By the afternoon (Sunday), a max of +8.0 degC had been reached, a rise of over 25 degC.
22nd
In Texas, more heat was forecast after temperatures soared to over 100 degrees in some areas. Firefighters fought a huge grass fire at Poolville, 35 miles northwest of Fort Worth, that had destroyed dozens of houses and injured at least 18 people.
24th
The death toll in Hong Kong's coldest snap in half a century has climbed to 29 as more elderly people succumbed to the unusually wintry weather. Temperatures have dropped as low as 3 degC in the territory, where the normally humid, sub-tropical climate makes central heating a rarity.
27th
Up to 60,000 Tibetan herders and their families are facing starvation and hundreds of thousands of yaks have died in savage winter snowstorms on a west China plateau. More than 100,000 people have been affected by storms that have battered Yushu since late 1995 and 60,000 of these faced extreme shortages of food, medicine and firewood.
27th
Thunderstorms rolled across the southern Plains (USA). The thunderstorms, some of them severe, developed during the morning and early afternoon over the southern Plains and began sliding through the lower Mississippi Valley. Hail up to 2 inches wide was reported during one storm near Commerce, Texas, and wind gusted up to 60 mph during storms in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

World weather news, March 1996

2nd
New York City got 4.6 inches of snow in its 13th snowstorm this winter, enough to set a record total of 66.3 inches for the season. The old record of 63.2 inches was set in the winter of 1947-1948.
6th
A deadly tornado and high winds spawned by severe thunderstorms left 7 people dead and more than 30 injured in Alabama. The worst of the damage occurred in a mobile home park. The violent weather conditions were caused by a cold front, pushing southeast towards Florida into warm, moist tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico.
7th
Indonesian rice farmers are battling to dry out crops hit by heavy rain. Traders said much of the rice from the main island of Java had higher than average water content as rain had disrupted the drying process. Water content in the rice that is coming in currently is about 17 percent or about two percent higher than average. Rice with 17 percent water content cannot be stored for more than 10 days while that with 15 percent water content can be kept for almost six months.
7th
A tornado cut a four-mile path of destruction through the Georgia countryside southeast of Augusta, leaving five people injured, one of whom was carried for more than 50 feet in the air.
7th
Rain, snow and bitter cold descended on parts of the south eastern USA, lowering temperatures almost 50degF. The cold snap, which also brought freezing rain and snow to the Northeast, was blamed for at least two deaths.
8th
A snowstorm in Massachusetts pushed the winter of 1995-96 into the record books, the latest snowfall brought to 245 cm the total winter accumulation, surpassing the previous record of 244.6 cm set in 1993-1994. The total seasonal snowfall for New York after Friday's storm was 176 cm, compared with the previous record of set in 1946-47 of 160.5 cm.
11th
Popocatepetl volcano has been spewing out clouds of ash and gas for a week. Preliminary satellite imagery shows an ashcloud drifting to the SSW (according to the WWW page of Michigan Technical University). AVN forecasts from the USA suggest dispersion of the ash cloud to the S and SE across the Caribbean. The cloud of ash and steam was thrown 3km into the air by the volcano, according to Reuters.
14th
An avalanche that swept through a hamlet in Pakistani administered Kashmir has killed at least 35 people. Official sources in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kashmir, said the incident took place in the Neelum valley about 150 km to the northeast.
17th
Flooding and landslides in Ecuador brought on by rainy weather since late February have left at least 23 people dead and forced 6,000 from their homes. The rainy weather, which has affected most of Ecuador since late February, has caused heavy flooding in nine of the nation's 21 provinces, particularly those on the Pacific coast.
18th
Violent thunderstorms swept through the Southeast USA, spawning at least 16 tornadoes in Alabama alone. Authorities reported only minor injuries and moderate damage to homes as the storm system moved through lower Mississippi and Alabama into Georgia, northern Florida and the Carolinas, bringing with it golf-ball sized hail and heavy rains.
19th
At least 40 people were buried alive when an avalanche covered more than seven houses in a village in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The area has been in the grip of torrential rains for the past four days and the northern areas have been badly hit by the heavy snowfall.
20th
A fierce winter storm hammered the Detroit area and other parts of Michigan, clogging roads with accidents, closing schools and causing at least one death. Wind gusts exceeding 50 mph and 8 inches of wet, heavy snow brought down power lines and tree limbs.
21st
Sri Lanka expects a sharp fall in rice and some other crops this year after northeast monsoon rains failed, possibly affecting tea and rubber export crops. Rain-fed crops without irrigation have suffered very badly because of very low rainfall from November 15 to December 31 last year. Production of dried chillies had fallen by half to around 10,000 tonnes, and the drought could also threaten tea and rubber crops, the island's main export commodities. Sri Lanka has two rainy seasons. The southwest monsoon, the most important for crops and for fuelling the country's hydroelectric plants, begins in mid-May. The northeast monsoon, from November to March, brings intermittent thundershowers and are considered necessary to keep crops healthy until rains arrive in May.
22nd
Desert is encroaching on parts of Mexico's beef belt states of Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon that have not seen rain for more than 1,000 days. Other regions are in their fourth consecutive year of below-average rainfall. Around 300,000 cattle perished last year, according to estimates. Deaths are lower this year - but only because there are half the number of animals left in Mexico.
24th
Another avalanche killed 36 people in Neelum valley about 150 km from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. This is the third such incident in the last 10 days in Azad Kashmir, which has been badly hit by torrential rains and heavy snowfall in its northern areas. More than 111 people have been killed in the last two weeks by avalanches.
25th
Rice farming in Laos has been badly hit by natural calamities and severe shortages of the staple food persist. For five successive years, a substantial portion of the Laos rain-fed rice crop was wiped out by floods, drought, or pest attacks. In 1995, the Laos rice crop sustained heavy damage from the country's worst floods in 30 years. Severe flooding, brought by typhoons Irwin and Louise last July and August, ravaged 62,350 hectares of paddy fields in central and southern regions. The areas accounted for 20 percent of total national hectarage.
25th
A wind-whipped snow storm that dumped a foot of snow on the upper Midwest USA was blamed for five traffic deaths and shut down highways, schools and businesses. A week into the start of spring, Minneapolis received its biggest snowfall of the entire winter and the heaviest snow this late in the season in a dozen years. Northern Wisconsin received up to 14 inches of snow, triggering school closings and shuttering businesses. Temperatures plummeted from a high of 80 degrees in the Great Plains over the weekend into single-digits (degF), endangering the nation's largest wheat crop.
27th
Floods, storms, earthquakes, droughts and other natural disasters killed 5,561 people in China in 1995 and inflicted $22.39 billion of losses. Southern China was swamped by torrential rain while the north suffered from spring droughts that extended into the summer. At least 5,561 people were killed and 240 million affected by the natural disasters. More than 10 million people nationwide lost their homes. A total of 45 million hectares (111 million acres) of arable land was affected, with the output of six million hectares (15 million acres) slashed by more than 80 percent and production from another 22 million hectares (55 million acres) cut by 30 percent, it said.
27th
Palaeontologists report in the journal Nature that the Arctic would have been a rather pleasant place to be 90 million years ago. The surprise finding has bearing on modern climate models trying to predict what a world with elevated greenhouse gases would be like. Fossil leaves from Alaska and Russia brought about the conclusion. 'There were good deciduous forests there then,' declared paleobotanist Jack Wolfe of the University of Arizona. Duck-billed dinosaurs roamed among cypress-like and broad-leaved trees on Arctic coastal plains in summer, nibbling ferns and horsetails against a backdrop of alpine mountains. About 30% of the margins of those leaves lacked teeth, which tends to be indicative of a warm climate. The fossil leaves were fairly large, which meant a favorable growing season, and often had downturned tips, or 'drip tips,' a sign of high rainfall. The lush leaves of tropical plants, for example, often exhibit drip tips, because leaves will rot unless the water runs off. An average summer day would have been as warm as 20C, according to the analysis. And even during the long months of winter darkness, average temperatures would have remained at, or above, freezing.

World weather news, April 1996

1st
The Australian government declared a drought in the eastern state of New South Wales, making eight years out of the past nine that the region has endured drought. Poor rainfall since the beginning of this year has left 42 percent of New South Wales suffering from drought. About half of the state's wheat belt is drought-declared. Drought-declared areas now cover the north-west of the state, much of the central west and the south areas.
4th
Remarkably dry air over England during the afternoon. At midday, temperatures were typically 7-8C with dew points below -5C over much of Wales, the Midlands and the Pennines/Lancashire. By 1800GMT Heathrow was reporting a temperature of 9.5C and dewpoint of -13C, when the dewpoints below -5C were confined to an areas from S Yorkshire to the Isle of Wight. Hygrograph records from Maidenhead show the humidity to be the lowest at about 1730GMT (20 per cent).
17th
In a finding that could revise science textbooks and improve global weather forecasting, scientists reported satellite data that challenge a fundamental theory abut the speed of large-scale ocean waves. These so-called Rossby waves - with hundreds of kilometres from one wave crest to the next - carry a 'memory' of weather changes at distant sites over the ocean, said Dudley Chelton, a member of the science team of the ocean-observing TOPEX-Poseidon satellite project. From satellite-gathered data, the scientists tracked waves moving through the open ocean and determined that, at mid-latitude, their speed is up to three times faster than previously thought. In animations of the satellite data, the waves - a natural result of Earth's rotation and a key feature of large-scale ocean circulation - appear as alternating positive and negative sea level features traveling throughout much of the world's oceans. By altering currents and their corresponding sea surface temperatures, the waves can influence the way the oceans release heat to the atmosphere and, thus, are able to affect weather patterns, the scientists said in the report in the journal Science. For example, in 1994, oceanographers at the Naval Research Laboratory mapped a Rossby wave they concluded was a remnant of a 1982-83 El Nino event. They found evidence the Kuroshio current, off the coast of Japan, was pushed northward, raising the temperature of the northwest Pacific - a shift some scientists blamed for the 1993 flooding across midwestern United States.
17th
Drought is likely to wipe out much of the wheat from the US breadbasket in Kansas. 'Some of the fields are 100 percent dead. Rain will not bring them back,' said Merle Witt, a Kansas State University research agronomist. Wheat in southwest and southcentral Kansas is in the worst condition, with plants stunted or killed by extremely dry soil. In central and northern areas of the state rain could still improve yield prospects.
19th
More than 500 houses were damaged and 800 people affected by a tornado that swept through southern China's Guangdong province. The tornado skimmed the western district of Zhuhai, a Chinese municipality that abuts the Portuguese enclave of Macau. A spokesman for Zhuhai's domestic airport said a number of flights had been delayed because of the adverse weather conditions. Across the Pearl River estuary in Hong Kong, pounding rains caused the cancellation of 18 incoming flights and the rerouting of several others.
19th
Lightning killed an airman and injured 10 others who were changing a helicopter tyre at Hurlburt Field Air Force Base in northwest Florida.
19th
A tornado swept through parts of Decatur (Illinois) Friday night damaging 50 to 60 homes, the second time in 24 hours that one of the deadly storms hit this city. There were numerous reports of injuries but no confirmed fatalities. One lumber yard was flattened. Many homes in the northwest part of Decatur were demolished or left without roofs, witnesses said.
19th
Thunderstorms and hailstones the size of chicken eggs killed six people and seriously injured 164 in south China. The storm, which hit China's southern Maoming city in Guangdong province in the morning, left five people missing and destroyed homes and plantations.
20th
Tornadoes flattened homes, toppled power lines and tossed trucks into the air on a path of destruction across the Midwest and South USA, killing two people and injuring dozens, officials said Saturday. Across several parts of the Midwest and South dozens were injured as tornadoes damaged hundreds of homes and trailers. At least 40 people were injured in Champaign-Urbana and Ogden (Illinois), and several blocks of residences were heavily damaged, Red Cross officials said. The agency set up shelters and feeding centers for those left homeless. Hail the size of golf balls crashed through car windshields in Chicago's south suburbs, but there were no serious injuries.
20th
At least two tornadoes tore through south-central Ontario (Canada) in the evening, causing widespread damage, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. After an afternoon of thunderstorms through much of Ontario, the tornadoes touched down in quick succession, uprooting trees, ripping the roofs off houses and bringing down power lines across highways, authorities said.
21st
Mudslides started by recent torrential rains killed 26 people in the northwest Bahia province. The deaths occurred when mud flowed over hillside neighbourhoods in the provincial capital of Salvador, and authorities blamed both the heavy rains and the construction of the homes on extremely porous soil. 'In the last 12 hours we have received 9.32 inches (233 mm) of rain, when precipitation for the whole month averages 14.4 inches (361 mm). ' Sunday's disaster marks the second time in two years that the semi- arid Bahia province has been hit by unseasonably heavy rains.
21st
A tornado swept through a five-mile stretch of northwest Arkansas on Sunday night, killing two children and injuring at least 50 people. The twister raced through downtown Fort Smith, 160 miles northwest of Little Rock near the Oklahoma border, before crossing the Arkansas River into a residential neighbourhood in Van Buren.
21st-23rd
Warm SW winds and mainly clear skies over the last few days have brought a steady rise in temperature across Germany. Maxima around 27-28 degC were widespread in the northern plains and along the Rhine on the 21st. This is the hottest April weather since the same date in 1968, when a similar synoptic situation brought a short heatwave and temperatures close to 32C in and around the Berlin area. Highest reading day by day were 29.2 degC in Karlsruhe (21st), 29.7 degC in Berlin-Dahlem (22nd) and 30.0 degC in Potsdam (23rd). Only 3 weeks ago the Baltic Coast was still partially iced over, and remains of deep snow drifts were still visible as temps rocketed to around 28C in coastal areas this week.
24th
Strong mud flows raging through a Philippine province north of Manila have killed four children and two construction workers as the country battens down for its annual monsoon season.
24th
Heavy rain caused flooding in Idaho, Washington and Oregon (USA) that has damaged at least two dozen homes, caused mudslides and forced some road closures.
25th
Flooding rivers and creeks Thursday closed dozens of roads, forced evacuations of homes and threatened at least two hydroelectric power plants in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Officials in Dickinson, Iron and Menominee counties focused their attention on the rising Menominee River, swollen by rain and record amounts of melting snow. Up to 250 inches of snow that fell in the northwestern U.P. in recent months has been melting, dumping tons of water into tributaries of the Menominee.
26th
With no more rain coming in April, here is the latest about Florence's (in Oregon, USA) amazing (since 1 July 1995) rainfall total. Through 25 April, Florence has had 2522 mm of rain. The annual average is 1941.8 mm. The 1996 total so far is 1319.5 mm.
26th
Frigid temperatures blew into northern Minnesota after a snowstorm that threatened to worsen flooding in a region hit by a record 10 feet of snow this season, the National Weather Service said. The mercury dipped to a record-low for the date at 14F International Falls, where the previous night's heavy snow forced the city's small airport to close for only the second time in history. The latest snowstorm brought the season's total for the city, known as 'the nation's icebox,' to 116 inches, breaking the previous record set four years ago. Flooding caused by the melting snowpack has saturated flat prairies in northern Minnesota and North Dakota, with run-off causing the Red River and other waterways to overflow their banks for several weeks.
26th
A 14-year-old boy has become the third person to be killed by lightning in the past two weeks in Singapore. Before the recent rash of deaths, lightning had killed an average of less than one person every two years during the past 15 years until 1995 when three people were killed, official statistics noted. Singapore's Meterological Service Department said April is the month with the most lightning strikes and has an average of 20 days with thunderstorms. Singapore's rate of 12 to 20 lightning strikes per square kilometre each year is one of the world's highest.
29th
Flash floods forced hundreds of East St. Louis, Ill., USA residents from their homes and thousands more people in Southern Illinois and Missouri were left without power in the wake of heavy rains and winds. Two deaths and several minor injuries in Missouri were blamed on the storm. Flood warnings were posted for central and southern Indiana, where levels along the Wabash River were the highest since 1994. Heavy rains fell in a 100-mile-wide east-west band from St. Louis across Illinois to southern Indiana. Parts of Illinois got 7 to 8 ins of rain overnight. Southeastern Illinois received as much as 10 inches of rain over a nine-day period.
30th
180 tornadoes in the USA during April - the normal is 114 for this month.
30th
-41F recorded at Ikermiuarrsuk (Greenland).

World weather news, May 1996

1st
Floodwaters from recent torrential rains receded in many heartland communities and farms, but runoff caused the Mississippi River to rise toward flood levels, authorities said.
2nd-3rd
Soaring temperatures in the Indian capital are taking a toll on animals at the Delhi Zoo. The zoo's cold weather animals, which include a Himalayan bear, four leopards from northeastern India and goats from the mountain region of Ladakh, are suffering the most. Temperatures in the capital reached 110F on the 2nd and can be expected to exceed 117F during the hottest part of the summer. To prevent animal deaths, Delhi zoo officials have been adding rehydration salts to the animals' drinking water. The zoo currently has three air coolers installed in the tiger house, but the machines are not working properly and the tigers are listless and hot. Last year, the zoo used 24 reed-mat coolers during the summer, but most have been sent out for repairs.
3rd
A Sudanese airliner has crashed while trying to land in a sandstorm, killing all 50 people aboard. The plane, on a domestic flight, crashed into an empty house as the pilot was trying to land in Shaqla, a town about 300 km north of Sudan's capital of Khartoum. The pilot had been forced to attempt landing short of his destination, Khartoum, by a sandstorm that affected much of Sudan on Friday night.
3rd-6th
Heavy thunderstorms in NE Germany on Friday evening brought localised flash floods, especially in parts of Berlin. About 40mm fell within an hour at Berlin-Dahlem and the 24-hour total there of 50.3 mm was an all-time record for May. Unusually late hard frosts occurred widely across N. Germany and the Low Countries on 5th and 6th. Fassberg recorded a minimum of -4.4C on 6th.
5th
Several houses were destroyed and several others damaged when a storm swept through Brandenburg (Kentucky, USA). The storm, which struck at 6 p.m. local time, may have been a tornado, but official confirmation of that status will await an inspection by the National Weather Service.
6th
Torrential rains along the South China Coast did $12 million damage in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, wreaking havoc on rice paddies, sugar cane plantations and fish ponds. Nearly 17 inches of rain pummeled the city at the mouth of the Pearl River early on Monday, flooding 1,000 factories. Officials said in some of the affected areas, the water rose as high as 13 feet and remained there for several hours. Meanwhile, the steady rain touched off three minor landslides and severe flooding in Macau, particularly on Taipa island and low-lying areas of the Macau peninsula. No injuries were reported.
6th
Thunderstorms spinning off tornados and dumping flash-flood rainfalls raked areas from Missouri to West Virginia, leaving at least three dead. The storms occurred along a stalled cold front running from Missouri to the Virginia coast.
8th
Hundreds of people have been evacuated and hundreds more were stranded in the worst floods to hit eastern Australia in 20 years. Major centers in the state of New South Wales including the towns of Byron Bay, Grafton and Murwillumbah, 900km north of Sydney, have been swamped in the weeklong deluge. State Emergency Services officials estimated the damage to be around $100 million Australian. At least 40 houses were submerged when the Clarence River gushed over levee banks at Grafton, forcing 250 people to flee, the police said.
8th
Cold, wet weather that has delayed spring planting in the United States and Canada sent grain prices soaring Wednesday amid renewed concerns over low worldwide stockpiles of wheat and corn.
8th
Thunderstorms brought more flash floods and high winds to the Midwest, and similar conditions were expected to hit the area through the weekend. A radio station said up to 5 feet of water covered streets in Carthage, in western Illinois. Hailstones measuring up to an inch in diameter were reported across central and southwest Missouri.
8th
Beatrice, Nebraska (USA) was hit by tornadoes around 9pm. As many as 20 homes were destroyed and 150 others damaged. No one was reported killed by the thunderstorms that ripped through the area but there were a number of minor injuries, mainly from flying glass.
10th
A tornado struck a nuclear power plant in northwest Illinois as twisters, heavy rain and severe thunderstorms raked parts of the Midwest USA. The tornado damaged three storage buildings at a nuclear power plant near Cordova. A spokesman for Commonwealth Edison, which operates the facility, said the main reactor building was not touched and damage overall was minor. A man in suburban Chicago was killed by lightning.
11th
Snowfalls, artificially-induced to put out huge fires still raging across the steppes of Mongolia, have killed thousands of cattle, civil defence officials said. At least 4,900 cattle froze to death or drowned in Oevorkhangai province, on the southern slopes of the Khangai Mountains, where snow 80 cm deep has thawed in places and flooded large areas of pasture. Snow fell across large parts of Mongolia after the governmenent and army, trying to put out fires that threatened Ulan Bator, seeded the clouds with explosives to squeeze out the humidity and prompt precipitation. Elsewhere in Mongolia, fires that started four weeks ago were still blazing. Officials said 76 fires were under control and that at least a dozen blazes were not. Fire damage has been estimated at around $1.8 billion. The severity of the fires, which have been declared a national catastrophe, has been blamed on an almost snowless winter that has left forests and pastureland tinder-dry.
12th
At least 24 people were killed and 20 injured in heavy storms that lashed central and eastern Nepal. Houses collapsed and high winds tore down electricity and telephone poles, making communications difficult. One-third of the trees in the Char Ali Forest, covering more than 1,745 hectares, were destroyed.
13th
Tropical storm Bart intensified into a typhoon on as it headed towards the northern Philippines with winds hitting 140 kph. Bart originally threatened the central provinces but swung north and was now a danger to northern provinces on the main island of Luzon.
13th
A powerful storm left almost 600 dead and over 1,500 wounded in the central district of Tangail, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. The storm, packing winds of more than 150 kph swept through several hundred villages in Tangail, some 150km north of Dhaka. It destroyed homes, uprooted trees and knocked over electricity pylons.
14th
Sri Lanka has only two weeks of power left in hydropower reservoirs because of plunging water levels caused by drought.
15th
A freak late season storm whipped into northern California from the Pacific Ocean, dumping heavy rains across the region and touching off concerns of flooding in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The impact of the heavy rains was even felt on the Internet as the Baltimore Orioles-Oakland Athletics afternoon game was rained out. The game was to have been the first major league contest ever broadcast live on the Internet.
16th
Intense thunderstorms producing as much as 6 inches of rain moved across southern Ohio forcing evacuations, closing numerous roads and bridges and pushing water levels in at least one dam to a 53-year high. The heavy rainfall came after two weeks of significant rainfall, with more than 10 inches falling across the same area since Saturday.
16th
Continued heavy rain in the Midwest USA is delaying plantings, raising river levels and causing flash floods but most weather experts say chances are unlikely for a repeat of 1993's 'Flood of the Century.'
17th
Seven inches of torrential rain from slow-moving thunderstorms prompted a flash flood warning for two counties in Ohio, USA. Up to three feet of water was blocking some roads and streets in Bryan, located about 60 miles west of Toledo.
17th
Parts of southern and central West Virginia have been hit with severe flooding since Wednesday following heavy rains that caused rivers and streams to overflow their banks. Warm weather brought record heat to Kansas for the second consecutive day; by midday, the temperature in Dodge City in western Kansas hit 99F, breaking the record for the date of 98F set in 1927.
18th019th
The annual Ten Tors endurance hike over Dartmoor, UK, was abandoned due to wind, heavy rain and some sleet.
19th
Sri Lanka faces daily power cuts of 18 hours in a week's time unless the monsoon rains start soon. Sri Lanka relies on hydro reservoirs for 84 percent of its electricity, but the vital winter northeast monsoon failed and the southwest monsoon has been delayed. The reservoirs are less than 15 percent full.
19th
Flash floods hit parts of the upper Midwest USA as severe storms boiling up in unseasonal heat swamped the region with heavy rains. The Des Plaines River burst over its banks in parts of suburban Chicago, and flood warnings were issued for that river and for the Fox River in northern Illinois. The storms occurred along a cold front bumping into hot humid air which brought summer-like temperatures in the 90s to parts of the area during the weekend.
20th
In New York, the temperature in Central Park of 95F was 3 degF higher than the record for the date set in 1959. Other highs included 94F at Newark, NJ, and 92F at Atlantic City NJ and 96F at Washington DC.
20th
Record heat continued to grip the Philadelphia area, just a week after a record cold snap had people scraping ice off their windshields. The scorching heat arrived on Sunday, five days after temperatures dipped into the 20s in the Philadelphia suburbs.
21st
Flash flooding drove more than 100 families from their homes in Illinois as residents of the Ohio River valley braced for more rain. Basements were flooded in scores of homes in Chicago's northern suburbs after up to seven inches of rain fell in the past three days.
21st
A line of powerful thunderstorms swept across central and southeastern Massachusetts USA, packing 60 knot wind gusts and blinding rain that ripped down trees and power lines and tore roofs off homes. Temperatures along the front dropped as much as 20 degF in a matter of minutes.
21st
High temperatures in eastern USA included 92F at Harrisburg, PA., 90-95F in Massachusetts and 96F in Baltimore.
22nd
Texas' top agricultural official said a drought gripping the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico was reaching disastrous proportions. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry said rainfall levels in a region that stretches north from Texas into Oklahoma and Kansas and west into New Mexico and Colorado were at their lowest levels in decades. San Antonio, Texas, had its second driest winter since 1885, while sub-tropical Houston has had only a third of its normal rainfall this year.
22nd
Rescue workers searched a coastal mountain glacier in British Columbia (Canada) for three experienced skiers feared dead after being caught in an avalanche of snow and ice last Saturday.
24th
Three people drowned and about 4,000 homes were damaged in heavy rains over the past few days in central Cuba. Four provinces were affected by the rain, which began on Sunday and was continuing on Friday.
25th
China's southwestern Lijiang county was hit by hailstones the size of table tennis balls. A nearly half-hour hailstorm pounded the prefecture, one of China's famous scenic spots. The hailstones dropped on 38 villages and 10 towns, damaging 7333 hectares of crops and rendering useless another 3,266 hectares. The hailstorm also destroyed homes and public facilities.
26th
Japan's economic forecasters, ever cautious about the country's budding recovery, are now blaming the weather, saying forecasts of a cool summer could cut consumption of air-conditioners and other durable goods.
26th
Weekend rain storms brought some relief to the bone-dry Panhandle areas of Texas and Oklahoma but were not enough to end one of the worst droughts of this century. Scattered storms dumped 6-10 inches of rain on areas of northwest Texas and western Oklahoma on Saturday and early Sunday
27th
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the greatest natural disaster in the history of St. Louis, the Great Cyclone of 1896. Some 305 people were killed when a wave of tornadoes cut through eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois on the afternoon of May 27, 1896. Most of the deaths came in crowded, working class neighborhoods of St. Louis.
27th
Transportation bottlenecks and slim government financial support are clipping the wings of beekeepers in China, the world's largest producer of bee products. With long-distance migratory methods, more than 100,000 Chinese beekeepers faced drought in the north and unusually cold and wet weather in the south while transporting their beehives to flower-growing areas. Because of inconvenient transport, only a small proportion of these plants can be utilized during their full-bloom period.
27th
Violent storms, heavy rain, heat and even snow marked Memorial Day across the United States, spoiling outdoor fun for many on the first official holiday of the coming summer season. Snow fell during the weekend on higher elevations of the Rockies as a storm moved slowly into the Plains states. A foot of snow was reported at Winter Park, Colo.
28th
Two people have been found dead near Dushanbe from three days of torrential rains that left at least 50 families homeless on the outskirts of the Tajikistan capital. The floods also destroyed hundred of acres of cotton and vegetable crops near Dushanbe.
29th
A tornado tore through Louisville's (Kentucky, USA) southern suburbs, injuring 45 people and damaging as many as 1,000 homes.
29th
Northern Mexico is suffering from the country's worst drought in 43 years, and strict conservation is needed in border states to ensure availability of drinking water. Rain (in 1996) has been 77 percent less than what would normally be expected by this time of year, making the drought is the worst since 1953.
29th
U.S. hurricane trackers will be flying higher and further than ever before in pursuit of information on the power and path of nature's mightiest storms. This hurricane season, meteorologists will fly a new $43 million jet to the highest reaches of approaching hurricanes to gather data that will help them determine how big and strong the storm is and where it is likely to hit land. The 1996 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins Saturday. Prof. William Gray of Colorado State University, has predicted that 11 tropical storms will develop this year, seven of which will become hurricanes.
30th
A heat wave has scorched Pakistan's southern and central plains for more than a week, killing at least 60 people. The searing heat was centered in the southern Pakistan provinces of Sindh, Punjab and Baluchistan, but authorities said it was slowly moving north toward the capital. The heat wave, ahead of the cooling monsoon rains, also killed hundreds of birds and cattle. In Multan, one of the hottest cities on earth, a circus elephant went berserk after his trainer left him in the sun. The elephant broke her chains and killed the trainer. Shops, schools and offices closed early in many areas.
29th-31st
Five small children died in a sandstorm that raged from May 29-31 near Dunhuang, a popular tourist spot in China's remote northwestern Gansu province. The five were among eight people who fell into an irrigation ditch in the blinding storm. The sandstorm and accompanying high winds and heavy rain caused $6 million worth of damage either directly or indirectly. Almost half of Dunhuang's 8,277-acre cotton crop was destroyed, along with much of the fruit crop.
31st
Britain suffered one of the coldest Mays in 300 years and the second-coldest this century with an average temperature of just 9.2C, the Meteorological Office. Before the warmer weather of the last few days arrived, May's average temperature had been on course to be the coldest since 1698 when 8.5C was recorded. May's rainfall was also low at only 57 mm, 18 percent below the average. Rainfall for spring 1996 in total was only 149 mm, 24 percent below the seasonal average. The Royal Horticultural Society estimated that the unseasonably cool conditions held back the growing season for many crops and plants by more than two weeks.
31st
Floods killed 23 people in Ivory Coast's commercial capital. Officials said those killed in the floods triggered by heavy overnight rain included many children. Ivory Coast is part way through one of its two annual rainy seasons.

World weather news, June 1996

1st
Since the beginning of the year drought across the 10 provinces that comprise China's prime wheat-growing region has parched 7 million hectares of crops and 2.1 million hectares of farmland. Less than 15 mm of rain have fallen over the past several weeks, leaving huge swathes of arable land between the Yellow River in the north and Huai River valley in the south unproductive. The Yellow River, which ususally bursts its banks from flooding in the summer months, has dried up five times since January along different sections of its lower reaches in Shandong province.
3rd
A heat wave gripping Pakistan has killed at least 45 people over the past week. The highest temperature - 120 F was recorded Sunday at the Sindh town of Jacobabad, followed by 116.6F at Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province and 115.8F at Multan in Punjab.
5th
Mountain torrents triggered by the continuous rainstorms pounding China's Jiangxi province have collapsed 5,700 homes and disrupted the lives of 1.8 million people. The hardest-hit areas are in Jiangxi's central region, particularly in the counties of Fuzhou, Yichun and Ji'an, which have virtually been soaked since the latter half of May. From May 30 to June 2, the average rainfall in the entire province was about 84 mm while in Yifeng county, it was as high as 270 mm.
5th
At least 50 people died in one day in a heatwave in Pakistan, bringing the death toll for the past 10 days to 95. The scorching weather was likely to continue, especially in southern Pakistan, for the next few days, though moisture brought by pre-monsoon eastern currents over Bangladesh might bring some relief to northeastern regions.
6th
Tornadoes, flash floods and hail the size of tennis balls struck parts of the central United States Wednesday night and Thursday. Tornadoes raged during the night in Minnesota, the Dakotas and eastern Kansas but no widespread damage was reported. Streets in Lawrence, Kansas, were flooded with up to 12 inches of rain Thursday morning and more heavy rain was expected later in the day. Motorists in the Kansas City metropolitan area scurried to move their vehicles under cover Wednesday night to avoid damage from large hailstones that accompanied the storms.
7th
The heat over southern Britain combined with traffic fumes to push smog above one of the thresholds set by the European Union, bringing air quality warnings from the Meteorological Office. The heat also caused isolated hour-long delays at London's Paddington rail terminal because newly laid tracks failed to settle in the heat.
7th
Reports concerning the evening's thunderstorms included: 2inch diameter hail in Dorset, and golfball-size hail in Norfolk. Flooding at Cleeve, near Goring (Berkshire) and at Wheatley (near Oxford). In north Luton there were agglomerations of hailstones "several inches" in diameter, resulting in much damage to foliage, etc, and several dead birds lying on the ground in the neighbourhood.
10th
India's monsoon has covered most of the southern and eastern region, and the entire country is expected to be under monsoon rains by July 15, a senior Indian Meteorological Department official said. He said that on Sunday the monsoon entered the western coast and southern and eastern India. The June-September monsoon arrived on June 3, two days late, in the southern state of Kerala.
6th-9th
A week-long heatwave, unusually intense for early June, has brought sweltering conditions to many parts of mainland Europe. In Germany, the hot spell was most intense on the three days ending Saturday (8th), with highest reported maxima of 33.0 (Bendorf,6th), 35.6 and 34.7 degC (Kalkar,7th,8th), respectively. On the 8th, 34 degC was reached even as far north as Kiel, while the night of 6th/7th brought some very high minima (22.8 degC at Bueckenburg). Widespread violent thunderstorms broke out over the weekend, with flash floods, lightning damage and severe hailstorms in places. Itzhoe reported 82mm of rain of 8th, while 93mm fell at Linz Airport (Austria) on 9th.
7th
Caught in the worst drought in living memory, hundreds of Navajo indians are making pilgrimages to a hogan to pray for rain, tribal leaders said. Two tribal gods are said to have entered the hogan, a home built of logs and mud, in late April to tell 96-year-old Irene Yazzie that the Navajo are suffering the drought because they are neglecting traditional religious practices. Unless the people return to traditional ways, the gods warned, the rains will not come, Albert Hale, president of the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona, said. Rain on the Navajo range has been less than a third of normal levels this year and tribal sheep and cows are starving.
9th
At least 40 people have been killed by floods in eastern Ethiopia. 103 villages along the banks of the Wabe Shebelle river in eastern Ethiopia had been flooded by recent rain.
9th
Recent rains have brought temporary relief to some areas of the southern United States, but experts said one of the worst droughts to hit the region this century is far from over. The eight-month-old drought had led some old-timers to talk of 'Dust Bowl days' of the early 1930s because of the prospect of widespread crop failures and farm bankruptcies.
11th
The first autumn storm of the year in southern Chile has caused an undetermined amount of damage and left around 300 people homeless. High winds tore off roofs and knocked down trees, fences and electricity cables in and around the city of Temuco, 900 km south of Santiago, and dozens of families have taken refuge at shelters set up in schools. The storm, the first of the southern hemisphere's autumn, also brought heavy rain to the region.
12th
Parts of the South Island were isolated by heavy snowfalls, as a wintry blizzard swept across New Zealand. Heavy snow fell on the South Island cities of Dunedin and Christchurch where police reported 'horrendous conditions.' Many schools were closed because it was too dangerous for children to be out of their homes. Swells as high as 6 m in the Cook Straight delayed ferry service between the North and South Islands.
12th
Officials in the southern desert district of Tharparkar have called the Pakistani army to help fight a growing number of snakes after at least 25 local people have died of snake bites. In less than a week, poisonous snakes have bitten more than 300 people in villages around Tharparkar, killing at least 25. An intense heat wave, which itself has resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people in the southern Sindh province since May 15, has forced thousands of snakes out of their pits.
13th
A string of powerful thunderstorms dumped as much as eight inches of rain on the northern Philadelphia suburbs, causing flash floods that killed two people and knocked out power to about 100,000 homes.
14th
A powerful tropical cyclone battered the southeastern coast of India Friday, killing 120 people. Five people died in Madras, a coastal city which received a record 14 inches in 24 hours until Friday morning. Tropical cyclones are fairly common in early summer in the region, which lies about 1,000 miles southeast of New Delhi.
15th
The smog that has engulfed Seoul for more than a month is likely to linger until near the end of June, an environment official said Saturday. 'The smog will clear when the summer monsoon begins around June 25,' said a spokesman for the Korea Meteorological Agency. The level of air pollutants and sulphur oxides and nitrogen dioxides doubles under the conditions, dropping visibility in the South Korean capital to 5-8km from the average 20-30km.
16th
Rescuers were searching for the crew of a Cypriot vessel who disappeared when the ship capsized after a collision with a Greek freighter in thick fog off the southern Korean port of Pusan, maritime authorities said. 'The collision took place around 11:50 p.m. on Saturday night in thick fog. Visibility was down to 10 metres.'
16th
Lightning killed a Moroccan youth and four French nationals went missing after torrential rains struck south Morocco.
16th
More than 65 people were believed killed, dozens missing and hundreds made homeless in the worst floods to hit the impoverished Arab state of Yemen, official sources said. They said unprecedented rains Friday and Saturday in the eastern provinces of Hadramout, Marib and Shabwa also caused widespread damage with hundreds of homes and farms affected.
18th
Scientists warned residents of south China's coastal areas to expect an onslaught this summer and autumn of storms, typhoons and giant waves that pose a severe threat to lives and property. 'More oceanic natural disasters are expected to hit' than last year, scientists said, 'making 1996 a year of dangerous oceanic disasters.' Meteorologists drew their conclusions from analyzing trends in the western Pacific Ocean, where usually warmer sea temperatures south of the equator have been dropping while subtropical high pressure over the northwest Pacific have weakened.
18th
An electrical apparatus that appears to create conditions for rain may be the answer to northern Mexico's 2- year-old drought. Reportedly, the machine invented by Russian Lev Alexandrovich has already succeeded in bringing rain to a northern Mexican town that had not seen precipitation in more than a dozen years. The system creates an electrostatic field that fosters condensation of moisture already in the air, promoting rainfall. One of the machines, known as Local Atmospheric Electrification device, caused a sensation by attracting rain in the town of Puerto de la Libertad. The results were not spectacular - a light afternoon sprinkle - but promoters say the full effects will not be felt until 45 days after the system of antennas is installed.
20th
Unrelenting rain saturated the Mid-Atlantic states, where at least four people were killed and hundreds stranded by rising waters. Up to 13 inches of rain fell in parts of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
19th-20th
A powerful cyclone lashed India's western coastal state of Gujarat, killing more than 30 people and leaving thousands homeless. At least 18 people were buried alive as hundreds of mud and straw homes collapsed because of heavy rains accompanied by strong winds of as much as 100kph.
20th
The remnants of Tropical Storm Arthur moved out to sea after brushing the North and South Carolina coasts with moderate winds and rain. Arthur, downgraded from a tropical storm to a tropical depression, dropped as much as five inches of rain on areas of South Carolina.
20th
Scientists chasing a tornado that ripped asphalt off a highway, tossed cars 600 feet into a field and splintered a house have captured the first detailed look inside a twister. The VORTEX team revealed images on Thursday from a new mobile radar system. Among the findings: a core wind that blew downward instead of up as predicted in some models, an outer zone where wind sped up again after dropping, and spiral bands spinning out of the center in the radar pattern.
20th
The death toll from flooding in western Tuscany rose to 11 as Italy's environment minister said past governments had not done enough to prevent such disasters. Rivers swollen by torrential rain storms broke their banks Wednesday, sweeping away cars, flooding houses and cutting off roads to several villages on the coastal plain and in mountains inland from the port city of Massa.
21st
Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir ordered all schools closed in the wake of flash floods that have swept through the valley. The flooding in Kashmir follows an intense cyclonic storm earlier this week that hit India farther south, along the coast of Gujarat.
21st
Ferocious cyclones which left a trail of death and devastation across western and southeastern India over the past week will also benefit many crops, analysts and officials said. They said standing crops such as foodgrains and oilseeds were not affected by the storms, although sowing in some areas could be delayed.
21st
Nearly 1,000 natives on federal reserves bordering Lesser Slave Lake in northern Alberta are waiting to return home after rivers and streams peaked at near record levels. The return home will depend on the weather. While the rain has stopped for now, over 160 millimeters has fallen since June 17.
22nd
central Italy Saturday as rescuers searched for seven people missing in western Tuscany, where at least 11 people have been killed in floods this week. Civil protection officials announced a flood warning for the northeast Friuli Venezia Giulia region, where road and rail links to bordering Austria and Slovenia were blocked and the river Tagliamento was threatening to break its banks.
23rd
Strong winds, electrical storms and rains lashed Mexico Sunday as Hurricane Alma moved slowly toward the southern Pacific coast. Mexican officials issued an alert as strong winds of 100 mph and gusts of up to 120 mph were reported, the Mexican National Weather Service said.
24th
Indian authorities air-dropped food and medical supplies to thousands of marooned villagers in the western state of Rajasthan, where flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains has killed at least 27 people.
24th
At least 11 people died when a river overflowed in the central Mexican city of Puebla, sweeping away cars and bridges and flooding homes.
24th
Hurricane Alma turned back out to sea and was downgraded to a tropical storm after a deadly brush with Mexico's Pacific coast that killed three people and left thousands homeless. Overnight winds of up to 100 miles an hour lashed the shoreline.
24th
A string of powerful storms bounded through Washington DC, causing the death of at least one person, destroying several suburban homes and leaving thousands of residents without power. At least three tornadoes were reported in northern Virginia and winds that hit 75 mph in some suburban communities caused widespread residential damage and toppled trees and power lines.
25th
A University of New Hampshire climatologist studying likely weather for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta said Tuesday temperatures there next month 'will be brutal.' Climatologist Barry Keim, also a lecturer in geography, said Atlanta's average high temperature in July is 88F. During the games, which end Aug. 4, anyone competing outdoors will be susceptible to high temperatures and high humidity. Georgia's summertime humidity is driven by the 'Bermuda high,' the high pressure system in the Atlantic that brings warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean to the eastern United States during the summer months.
28th
Seven people were killed in flash floods while on a hiking expedition in a mountainous northwest of the Omani capital.
30th
Hurricane Boris fizzled out over central Mexico after pummeling the southwestern coast, killing at least four people, injuring 70 and leaving more than 10,000 homeless. Up to 10 inches of rain fell, causing flooding, and winds reached 90 mph.
30th
Flooding caused by torrential rains has killed at least one person and stranded more than 50,000 others in northern Bangladesh. Thousands of mud houses were washed away in the districts of Jamalpur and Sherpur, while floodwaters damaged crucial rice crops in the rural area near the Indian border.

World weather news, July 1996

1st
Up to 338 people have been killed and thousands made homeless in the worst floods to hit the Arab state of Yemen in three decades. More than 22,000 people were made homeless by the floods that started in mid-June in the eastern provinces of Shabwa, Marib, Hadramout and Abyan.
3rd
Authorities in El Salvador declared an emergency in areas affected by three days of heavy rain that has caused flooding and mudslides and forced hundreds of people from their homes.
3rd
Rapidly dissipating tropical storm Cristina hit land in the state of Oaxaca, bringing high wind and heavy rain along an 140-km stretch of Mexico's Pacific coast. The neighboring states of Chiapas and Guerrero also received heavy rain as a result of the storm, only days after hurricane Boris hit the Guerrero coast.
3rd
Another polar outbreak for NZ. Most severe south of Christchurch especially Southland with persistent low temperatures and snow to sea level. An anticyclone is now building and the frosts are expected to get severe. Already Invercargil in Southland has reported a record grass minimum for July of -13.4C with an air reading of -9.0C this morning. The snow brings joy to the North Island ski fields because it is covering over the ash from the Ruapehu volcano which closed them all down. Southern Brazil has been having unprecedented snow falls.
4th
Invercargil (New Zealand) again broke its all time low grass reading for second day with -14.4C; yesterdays max was 1C. Although the town is far south (only 46 S though) it is on a low flat plain by the roaring Pacific Ocean and very rarely gets snow.This time it has a good covering of snow which is undoubtedly the reason for the extreme lows.
4th
Monsoons continuing to pound Bangladesh and flooding more than 25 percent of the country so far have killed five people and left 20 million homeless.
4th
At least 226 people have died after torrential rains swept across China's eastern Zhejiang province, and the army has been sent in to rescue tens of thousands of villagers trapped by floods. Heavy rains also hit central Jiangxi province, causing the water level of the Yangtze river to rise to 33.18 metres, or 4.68 metres above the danger level. Monitoring stations recorded 328 mm of rainfall in Lin'an in the first 24 hours of the downpour, the heaviest in in the region in 50 years.
5th
Continued cold snap in New Zealand produced record minima for July in Wanaka and Gore both close to -10C. The heaviest snowfalls for 40 plus years on the eastern slopes of the North Island (over 400m mainly) of about 30+ cm trapping a number of trucks and closing roads for the last two days. Further north still the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula,further north than Auckland at 36.6S. had its highest peak Moehau (850m) covered in white which is almost unheard of except by real old timers.
5th
Floods sweeping across large areas of Bangladesh killed at least nine people and left thousands homeless, officials said.
5th
At least one fisherman died and more than 20 people were reported missing in southern Mexico in the wake of tropical storm Cristina.
6th
The death toll in floods sweeping large areas across Bangladesh rose to 12 after three children drowned in the northern district of Sirajganj.
7th
The heat wave baking North Texas continued to pose a deadly threat, forcing authorities to struggle to prevent residents from succumbing to its effects. At least four elderly victims between 67 and 93 years old died over the holiday weekend. The National Weather Service forecasters predicted the mercury would top out between 103 and 107 degF. The record high for the day was 105 degrees, set in 1914.
7th
Unprecedented snowfalls closed most major roads into South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province as parts of the country shivered through some of their coldest weather in 15 years. 20 people died as a result of the weather; the lowest temperature was recorded at Kimberley (-7degC). The N3 highway, the main artery connecting the country's commercial and industrial hub around Johannesburg with Durban port on the Indian Ocean, was closed indefinitely at a nearby mountain pass because of snow that had drifted six feet deep in places. Some parts of the country had recorded their heaviest snowfalls in 60 years. Heavy snowfalls are rare in South Africa and traffic authorities are generally ill-equipped to deal with them.
8th
Private cars were banned from central Athens for the third time in five days to help combat heavy air pollution in a scorching heatwave. Temperatures rose to 41degC and an absence of wind, the environment ministry decided to ban private cars, halve the number of taxis allowed on the road and order industry to cut production by 30 percent to curb pollution.
8th
One German tabloid paper today is describing the current summer as a 'Horror Summer'! Last Friday, prolonged rainfall brought up to 70mm of rain in places. Across a wide part of Bavaria, an exceptionally violent squall line with thunderstorms caused considerable damage, ripping off roofs, blowing down trees and injuring several people. At least 25 sailing boats were turned over or sunk on the region's lakes. Gusts up to hurricane-force were recorded and damage costs are likely to reach to several million DM. Near Munich University for example, a 10 x 20 meter array of scaffolding was blown over onto the street below, burying 4 parked cars.
8th
Southern China mopped up after some of the worst floods in a century killed more than 400 people, with farmers replanting crops and troops buttressing river embankments. With the death toll at least 405 in six provinces and expected to rise as more bodies were dug out from landslides or found in collapsed homes, officials were on alert for more storms as the annual typhoon season neared.
8th
Bulgaria sweltered in record-high temperatures Monday, with thermometers registering 45 C in many places. Readings of 50 C, an all-time record for the Balkan nation, were reported in the Danube port of Silistra. Forest fires broke out in many places, and officials warned that most crops will perish if the heat wave continues.
8th
Stormy weather lashed northern and central Italy with high waters killing two in northern Italy and gale-force winds whipping up fierce forest fires in the centre of the country. Police said torrential rains battered Lago Maggiore near the border with Switzerland, killing an elderly woman whose house collapse under the deluge.
8th
The flooding of the Orinoco river in southern Venezuela has affected dozens of Indian communities and poses a serious health threat. Large parts of Venezuela's Amazon region, which includes the southern states of Amazonas, Bolivar, Delta, Amacuro, Guarico and Apure, have been hit by the flooding, with the heaviest rain of the year expected between July 15 and Aug. 15.
8th
Unseasonal heavy snowfalls blanketed parts of the French Alps and Pyrenees, forcing a change of route for the Tour de France cycle race. Several regions suffered record low temperatures and others were buffeted by exceptionally high winds and heavy rain, the weather bureau said. 'We get this type of weather only every five or 10 years. In July, you almost never get snow below 9,800 feet. This time, we had snowfalls as low as 5,900 feet,' a weather bureau spokesman said.
8th
Bertha, the first hurricane of the 1996 Atlantic season, became a killer storm Monday as it ripped through the northern Caribbean, targeting its maximum sustained winds of 90 mph at the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
9th
A wide area of Germany, stretching in a broad band from the SW to the East, recorded over 50mm of rain. The highest 24-hour total was 86mm at Posen. Blizzards occurred at higher levels in the Alps. At least 40cm of fresh snow fell at the summit of the Zugspitze, increasing the level depth there to 2m. Last year, all but some traces of snow had melted away by early August.
8th
Storm winds tearing through central Poland killed one person and injured five. It said the winds in Plock province late Monday tore the roof off a barn in the village of Suchodebie, crushing a 74-year-old farmer who died on the way to the hospital. Emergency services worked hard in several regions to clear damage from winds and rain which wrecked houses as well as power and telephone lines.
9th
A record-breaking heat wave sweeping northern Texas and Oklahoma has killed as many as 16 people, most of them elderly. (9th)
10th
Typhoon Dan, the first typhoon to threaten Japan this season, dumped torrential rains on Tokyo as it approached the Boso Peninsula east of the capital. Dan brought heavy rain, and in some places near Tokyo 16 inches have fallen since Sunday.
10th
The U.S. Department of Agriculture named 22 Texas counties as natural disaster areas due to the drought.
10th
Two years after freezing temperatures ravaged Brazil's coffee crop and sent prices to near 10-year highs, frost scares are worrying the world's top grower again.
10th
Torrential rains have triggered floods which killed at least 15 villagers and inflicted more than $8 million in damage in northwestern Iran since Friay. The floods also killed 1,788 cattle, destroyed 300 houses and damaged farmlands and roads in East Azerbaijan Province.
11th
Acid rain is the latest fear resulting from several days of eruptions at New Zealand's most active volcano, Mount Ruapehu. Measurements this week showed the mountain was pumping out 6,000 tons of sulphur dioxide gas a day.
12th
Hurricane Bertha fizzled into a tropical storm after clobbering North Carolina, devastating a swath of coastal resorts and leaving many communities devoid of electricity. The storm is blamed for the deaths of at least 10 people, including one man in North Carolina's Outer Banks, as it developed during the past week, forming in the Caribbean and continuing up the East Coast of the USA.
14th
Cleanup crews and residents worked to recover from flash flooding that left two people dead as it swept through a central Colorado forest (Pike National) bereft of vegetation and natural defenses.
14th
Floods and landslides triggered by seasonal monsoon rains in Nepal have killed at least 11 people, inundated towns and villages and destroyed crops nationwide since Thursday.
14th
A massive landslide in India's West Bengal state killed at least 34 people and stranded 100,000 others.
15th
The night of 16-17 July was unusually cold in Germany. Roth (Bavaria) recorded a minimum of 3 C, while Berlin-Dahlem set a new date record for 17 July with 7.6 C. (17th) The US Insurance Information Institute reported property losses from Hurricane Bertha, which battered the Carolina coast on Friday, is estimated to cause $194 million in insurance losses in the continental USA.
15th
Freezing temperatures affecting many parts of Peru have killed at least 200 children in the past three weeks. Temperatures have dipped as low as 10 degF, particularly in the southern Andean Mountain region. Ever Menacho, head of the National Meteorological Service, said this winter will be one of the coldest for Peruvians in the last few years, and that ocean temperatures along the Pacific coast have fallen several degrees below the seasonal average.
15th
A tornado killed 21 people and left more than 200 people injured in townships in eastern China's Jiangsu province early Monday morning.
16th
Flooding and landslides have killed up to 200 people and made some 2.2 million homeless in northeast India and north Bangladesh as monsoon rains continue to lash the region.
17th
Heavy overnight rain triggered floods that paralysed Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, blocking streets with broken-down cars and severing power supply and communications across much of the city.
17th
Powerful thunderstorms caused flash flooding in portions of western Iowa, while heavy downpours, hail, gusty winds and possible tornadoes battered northern Illinois. Roughly 100 residents of Denison and Dow City were evacuated after up to 10 inches of rain fell overnight, swelling streams and flooding streets. 14 ins was reported in parts of Chicago. An unofficial rain guage in Aurora collected 16.19 inches of rain, just two inches less than the all-time, 24-hour record for rain recorded in Alvin, Texas, in July 1979.
18th
Typhoon Eve, packing maximum winds of 67.5 mph, raged through Japan's southern main island of Kyushu, injuring at least 15 people and forcing the closure of hundreds of schools.
18th
Unusually heavy snow has cut off remote mountain villages in Lesotho and snow has fallen in parts of South Africa for the first time in 35 years.
19th
A weakened Typhoon Eve moved off the Japanese coast on with heavy rainfall. On Thursday, the storm hit the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, knocking out power to 160,000 households and injuring 15 people, none seriously.
19th
Flames shot up hundreds of feet and black smoke was visible for 20 miles Friday after lightning hit a 75000-barrel storage tank at a gasoline refinery in Ontario, Canada.
19th
Floods continued to sweep through northern Bangladesh as officials put the death toll from a week of torrential rains at more than 30.
19th
At least 15 children were killed and as many again injured after lightning struck a school in the eastern state of Bihar.
20th
Two people including a child were killed by flash floods that swept parts of Western Pennsylvania, USA, after heavy rains caused streams and creeks to overflow.
20th-21st
More than 4,000 people were evacuated from their homes in northern Quebec after flash floods killed 10 people, including two children.
23rd
Nepal made a nationwide appeal for aid for victims of monsoon-spawned floods and landslides that have claimed at least 74 lives in the past two weeks.
23rd
Two women attending Queen Elizabeth II's garden party in the grounds of Buckingham Palace were slightly injured when a bolt of lightning struck the gathering.
24th
Twelve people have died and scores injured in the central Chinese city of Chongqing, the latest area of China to be slammed by this season's torrential rainstorms. Between late July 20 and early July 22, more than 200mm of rain fell on the mountainous city, resulting in a dozen deaths.
25th
The season's third tropical depression was near the Netherlands Antilles, whipping the eastern Caribbean with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph that threatened to intensify to tropical storm strength by day's end.
25th
One person was killed and several others injured when heavy rain caused about 20 homes to collapse in and around Caracas, Venezuela.
25th
A strong typhoon that triggered flash floods and landslides killed at least 20 people in the northern Philippines. According to the Philippine Astronomical Geophysical Services Administration, Typhoon Gloria the 'strongest and wettest' tropical cyclone to hit the country so far this year.
25th
A landslide triggered by heavy rain crushed a South Korean Army barracks, killing at least 19 soldiers and injuring nine others, 130km north of Seoul. The heaviest monsoon rains of the year dumped 178 mm of rain on the area late Thursday and early Friday.
26th
Tropical Storm Cesar grew stronger as it pounded its way north toward the coast of Nicaragua after hammering Venezuela with torrential rains that killed at least five people. Hundreds of people in Venezuela were left homeless Friday after Cesar passed through. In Caracas flooding caused precarious homes to crumble in the western districts of Caricuao and and Macarao.
28th
Hurricane Cesar was downgraded two steps to tropical depression status as it passed inland over Nicaragua. Six persons died in the country.
29th
The former Caribbean storm system known as Hurricane Cesar that regained strength to become Pacific Hurricane Douglas expanded along the southern Mexico coast with winds extending 140 miles from its center.
30th
Floods in North Korea have killed an undetermined number of people and seriously damaged vast areas of the country since torrential rain started in mid-July.
30th
Flash flooding stranded about 30 campers Monday night at Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Texas, USA.
31st
Typhoon Herb moved through Taiwan, causing landslides and flashfloods along the island's east coast and forcing it to shut down for the duration of the storm. Typhoon Herb, claimed 45 lives and caused millions of dollars of damage in the country's worst natural disaster in nearly four decades.

World weather news, August 1996

1st
A powerful typhoon that smashed into southeastern China killed several dozen people, including some struck by lightning, and left tens of thousands homeless. In the southeastern coastal province of Fujian where Typhoon Herb made landfall, several dozen people had been killed.
5th
Monsoon floods and landslides in Nepal have killed at least 111 people over the last month. 63 people are still missing.
5th
Belgium went on drought alert after a lack of rain depleted water reserves and sparked concern about a repeat of forest and heath fires which swept parts of the country several months ago. Rainfall in Brussels was down 30 percent since July 1995. In the Ardennes in the south and in eastern areas it was 30 to 40 percent below average. Residents of the city of Rochefort in the hilly Ardennes region in the south, which has been worst affected by the dry spell, woke up to find they were banned from using hose pipes to wash their cars or water their gardens. Other isolated Ardennes towns were relying on tanker and fire brigade deliveries for water supplies.
6th
Torrential rains have swollen three of China's biggest rivers to danger levels and officials warned against epidemics in the wake of widespread floods which have killed more than 2,000 people this year. The waters of the Yellow River, known as China's sorrow for its devastating floods throughout history, had risen to a historic high following several weeks of rain. Downpours across southeastern and central China after two powerful typhoons last week had swollen the waters of the Yangtze river, Asia's longest, and the northern Haihe river. Millions of people were on round-the-clock alert along the banks in case the rivers overflowed.
6th
A drought is forcing authorities to impose tough water restrictions in western France, normally one of the country's rainiest regions. Rainfall since the winter has been less than half the normal rate and failed to replenish reservoirs, worrying farmers in the livestock and grain-producing region.
6th
Severe thunderstorms and high winds tore through the Kansas City (USA) area, ripping part of a roof from a library and tossing a car over an embankment into a creek.
8th
Despite temperatures of around 70 F (21 C), the English city of Sheffield was blanketed with 15 cm of snow during a freak August storm, according to Britain's popular tabloid press. But the reports of freak August snow were dismissed by the Meteorological Office. 'With the temperatures involved, it's not likely to be snow, but hail from a heavy shower or thunderstorm'.
8th
At least 76 people died and more than 180 were injured when a torrent of mud and rock swept over a crowded family campsite in the Pyrenees mountains of northern Spain. Officials feared dozens more bodies could still lie downstream in a river near the 'Virgen de las Nieves' (Virgin of the Snows) campsite in the mountain town of Biescas, about 80 miles east of Pamplona.
9th
Chinese authorities evacuated some 10,000 people and prepared to blow up dikes and divert a swollen northern river to spare the key city of Tianjin from flooding.
9th
About 400 residents of towns near Sherbrooke, about 150 kilometres east of Montreal, were forced from their homes when heavy rains caused at least two rivers to overflow, officials. The flash flood, caused by heavy rain late Thursday and early Friday, was the second in less than one month to hit Quebec province.
9th
Flash floods on the outskirts of the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator have killed six people since Thursday, bringing the death toll from floods in recent weeks to 24. The floods followed rainstorms late on Thursday that destroyed roads and dozens of felt tents in districts to the northwest of the capital. Ulan Bator's weather station was out of order as a result of a broken radar and could not give warnings of fierce storms.
10th
Floods spawned by torrential rains in southeast China have killed more than 235 people and left 282 missing after some of the worst rains in one coastal county for 500 years, officials said on Sunday.
12th
Energy officials held an emergency meeting to see what they can do to prevent a repeat of the massive weekend power cut that stretched from Canada to Mexico and nine states in between, leaving an estimated 4 million people without power. Extremely high temperatures caused 500,000-volt lines in the Portland area to sag as much as eight feet, with the electricity jumping from the lines to overgrown trees and shorting out the lines.
12
Enormous storm hit east and south Kent and neighbouring parts of East Sussex Monday (mostly) morning, 12th August. For about 2 hours the Ashford area was getting 32mm/hour or more. At Sellinge, near Ashford, 60.5mm fell in one hour at the peak of the storm. 110mm fell in Folkestone.
13th
A flash flood in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir claimed the lives of eight Indian soldiers whose vehicle was swept away by the water.
13th
Thousands of Japanese travellers endured flight cancelations and delays as typhoon Kirk roared toward southern Kyushu Island during Japan's peak summer vacation season. Kirk, packing maximum winds of up to 108 mph, swelled tides with waves of up to 30-feet high in waters around Okinawa and Amami island.
13th
Forecasts for the grain and sugar beet harvest released indicate impending disaster in Ukraine's farm sector, victim of the worst drought in decades and worsening difficulties inherited from the Soviet era.
13th
Belgium's drought came to an end with torrential overnight rains and forecasts of more cloudbursts to come. The downpours between Monday night and Tuesday evening flooded cellars and roads and caused some car crashes but little other damage.
14th
Powerful Typhoon Kirk lashed western Japan, killing at least four people and injuring 43 before heading toward the nation's northeast tip. More than 200,000 houses in western Japan were affected by temporary power cuts, and more than 450 flights were canceled, affecting some 72,000 passengers.
14th
Sudan has appealed to the world community to provide relief after floods that have demolished more than 300 homes along the White Nile River. Rains and floods have engulfed nine villages in White Nile State, destroying 326 homes and rendering homeless about 25 percent of the local population.
15th
Vietnam Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet has put provinces in the Mekong Delta on alert for major flooding due to heavy rains that have swollen upper reaches and tributaries of the river. The Central Meteorological Office said water levels at Tan Chau in the southern border province of An Giang would rise to 3.5 metres by the end of the month, just under level two on a flood alert scale. Southern waters have been swollen by the effects of Typhoon Frankie, a tropical storm that lashed northern regions of the country at the end of last month.
22nd
The waters of Awash River (Ethiopia), which recently threatened to flood an area where 150,000 people live, have started receding. The Awash River, fed by rains from the highlands, was threatening to overflow and destroy thousands of hectares of sugar estates at Shoa, Wonji and Metharar along its banks some 65 miles east of Addis Ababa. (22nd)
22nd
Mexico's northeast coast braced Thursday for Dolly, freshly upgraded to hurricane status and on track to strike land sometime Friday morning.
23rd
Authorities have declared an emergency in Pakistan after floods and heavy rains killed seven people and marooned thousands more. According to the report, Lahore, Sheikhupura and Narangmandi areas of central Punjab province are the worst affected and authorities there have called out troops to rescue thousands of marooned people.
23rd
Heavy rain and snow fell on a treacherous mountain trail leading to a holy shrine in India's northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, killing at least 235 Hindu pilgrims and trapping some 70,000 others. The pilgrims, including families and Hindu ascetics, were trekking by horse and foot to caves in the city of Amarnath to view a large ice stalagmite, believed to represent the phallus of the Hindu god Shiva.
23rd
Typhoon Niki killed seven people when it roared past China's Hainan Island on its way to northern Vietnam. The seven were killed as the typhoon ravaged the resort city of Sanya on the island province's southern tip, which was lashed by high winds of up to 93 mph and heavy rains, the agency said.
23rd
Pakistani authorities called out troops and declared a state of emergency in the city of Lahore after torrential rain caused floods and at least seven deaths and six injuries.
23rd
Hurricane Dolly spread storms across most of rain-starved Texas as it made landfall on Friday in northern Mexico, providing brief relief to areas of the state dried out by a prolonged drought. The hurricane crashed onshore near Tampico, Mexico, dumping torrential rains in northern Mexico and spreading storm bands across the Rio Grande Valley into northern Texas.
24th
Unprecedented rains in the catchment areas of two of Punjab's (Pakistan) five rivers - Ravi and Chenab - marooned thousands of people while the flood monitoring department in Islamabad said the worst was yet to come. On Friday Punjab's capital Lahore received the highest rainfall on a single day in 15 years.
24th
Winds for Hurricane Edouard increased on Saturday to about 115 mph, prompting the US National Weather Service to upgrade the storm to a Category 3 hurricane. The storm moved west across the Atlantic Ocean with the season's sixth tropical depression following in its path with mild 35 mph winds.
24th-26th
At least four people were killed and scores left homeless over the weekend when torrential rains whipped by gale-force winds struck Colombia's central coffee-growing region.
27th
Hurricane Edouard remained a powerful storm with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph as it moved north of the Caribbean islands, the National Hurricane Center said.
28th-30th
The rainfall event in East Anglia and Southeast England between the evening of the 28th and approx 0500 GMT on the 30th was heavy, if not a record-breaker. Total rainfalls for the event are as follows: Lowestoft 84mm, Marham 37mm, Weybourne 52mm, Norwich 82mm, Coltishall 100mm, Hemsby 86mm, Wattisham 37mm, Stansted 12mm, Shoeburyness 19mm, Manston 52mm.
29th
The National Hurricane Center ugraded Tropical Storm Fran to a hurricane. At 5 a.m. EDT, Hurricane Fran was centered 385 miles east of Antigua with winds of 75 mph.
29th
One man died after being swept off a yacht as torrential rains and gale force winds battered Belgium, causing widespread damage. The 45-year-old man fell overboard in the Channel off the coastal town of Nieuwpoort. Some areas had more rainfall in 24 hours than they normally get in a month, the meteorological office said. Cellars, houses and streets were flooded throughout the country, trees were uprooted and roofs and cars damaged. Brussels received 2.24 inches of water in the past 24 hours - compared to an average 2.96 inches per month - but in several districts in the south of the country up to 3.2 inches fell, the Royal Meteorological Institute said.
30th-31st
In southern Australia the weather feature for month was an " East Coast Low " that formed on the 30th virtually over Sydney. This brought over 100mm on the 31st in places with gale force winds. Port Kembla Coast Guard recorded a 90knot gust. Seven people died, two from drowning and five others in accidents on treacherous roads. Insurance assessors estimated the damage at more than U.S. $10 million.
31st
Floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed 244 persons in 61 of Nepal's 75 administrative districts.
31st
Three people died in the central Mexican town of Leon when a sudden storm caused a river to burst its banks, the government news agency Notimex said.

World weather news, September 1996

2nd
At least 105 people have died in this year's seasonal floods in Pakistan, which have inundated about 3000 villages, an official survey said.
1st-2nd
At least six people died over the weekend in widespread floods across Mexico, partly caused by the Tropical Storm Elida.
3rd
Almost 400 people have died in tropical storms and flooding in northern Vietnam since the start of July. Tropical storms and flash flooding caused by torrential rains had killed 394 people, seriously affected 262,787 households and caused $362 million worth of damage.
3rd
A rainstorm with hail and winds of 40 miles per hour killed a woman and wreaked havoc in Rio de Janeiro. The storm, which left many Rio neighborhoods temporarily without electricity, raged for about an hour in the evening, knocking down trees, flooding streets and blowing tiles off roofs, a spokewoman for Rio's disaster relief agency said. Santos Dumont domestic airport was shut down because of the storm and traffic jams formed everywhere. Models and visitors at Rio de Janeiro's spring and summer fashion show had to run for cover in high heels and miniskirts when the wind blew down the tent over the catwalk. A spokesman for the National Meteorological Institute said a cold front approaching from the south had clashed with the city's hot air masses, causing the sudden tropical rainstorm.
4th
The hurricane watch for the U.S. east coast was extended northward as Hurricane Fran headed northward east of the U.S. coast, the National Hurricane Center said.
5th
At least 30 people were injured, two of them seriously, when an Air France Boeing 747 encountered severe turbulence on a flight from Johannesburg to Paris, an airline spokesman said. He said the plane made an emergency landing in the southern French city of Marseille to evacuate the injured.
6th
Hurricane Fran on unleashed its fury on North Carolina, killing at least 10 people before it lost steam in the Piedmont and returned to tropical storm status. Fran unleashed torrents of rain after it came ashore near Cape Fear. Between 10 and 15 inches of rain fell along Fran's path. Major flooding was already occurring in western Virginia which was declared a disaster area by President Clinton. Volunteers in boats had to rescue more than 15 families from rooftops in Danville, Va., and helicopters people from mountain areas because of the flash flooding. The total death toll along the track of Fran was 30.
7th
Tropical storm Hortense formed east of the Caribbean Saturday with strengthening winds of 65 mph bearing down on the on the Lesser Antilles.
10th
Hurricane Hortense rolled along the northern coast of the Dominican Republic with 75 mph winds, leaving a battered, flooded Puerto Rico in its wake. Ponce, on Puerto Rico's south coast, reportedly took a heavy pounding, with winds gusting to 80 mph and a storm surge that sent flood waters at least 0.5 mile inland from the beaches.
10th
Typhoon Sally battered several remote villages of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces in China, forcing more than 15 million residents to flee their homes.
11th
Hurricane Hortense's winds strengthened to 105 mph as it battered the Turks and Caicos islands in the southeastern Bahamas with high winds and seas.
13th
Hurricane Fausto smashed into Baja California, knocking down trees and cables and leaving at least one person dead as it swept across the peninsula and moved into the Gulf of California. Storm surge flooding from 5 to 10 feet was expected in the gulf. Fausto was the first fatal hurricane to hit the area in 20 years.
14th
Hurricane Hortense carried its 90 mph (150 kph) winds north over chilly Atlantic waters, posing a threat of hurricane-force winds and heavy rain for the Canadian Maritimes.
21st
An avalanche swept away a Frenchman and two Sherpa guides as they scaled Mount Everest. The climbers were at 7800 m when the avalanche occurred. More than 70 groups are vying to climb Himalayan peaks during the autumn climbing season, authorities said.
23rd
Typhoon Violet which tore through Japan claiming seven lives and triggering nationwide mudslides, began easing as it moved up to the northernmost main island of Hokkaido. In Tokyo the typhoon brought 240mm of rain in 10 hours, the third heaviest downpour in the Japanese capital since the Meteorological Agency began keeping records in 1876.
25th
Tropical storm Isidore, the ninth named storm of the Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season, formed with 65 mph winds in the far eastern Atlantic, 950 km west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands.
26th
Isidore became the seventh hurricane of the 1996 Atlantic season as its top sustained winds strengthened and reached 90 mph.
26th
Less than a week into autumn, the Black Hills of South Dakota were blanketed with snow. It is not unusual for the Rocky Mountains to get snow in September, but usually it amounted to flurries and not drifts that stick.
28th
Heavy rains and floods from nearby typhoon Zane caused at least two structures to collapse in Taiwan, while one person was reported missing. Zane dumped 200mm of rain on Taiwan's north and east coasts, causing rock slides along the east coast.
29th
One hundred people have been killed and about 4,000 houses destroyed in Nile floods and heavy rains in five of Sudan's 26 states. The floods have also done heavy damage to farms and livestock. The states affected are Khartoum, White Nile and River Nile in the north and Upper Nile and Jonglei in the south.
<29thdd>Golf - cricket ball size hail to the New England plateau area of New South Wales (Australia). The town of Armidale was worst affected with damage running into millions.
30th
Police and soldiers scrambled to stem major floods that threaten Cambodia's capital and have already killed 11 people throughout the country. Typhoon activity and heavy rainfall caused the Mekong River to burst its banks over the weekend, affecting seven of the country's 21 provinces. Close to 1.3 million people have been affected.
30th
At least 30 people have drowned and vast areas of farm land throughout Laos have been devastated in the worst monsoon flooding in recent years.

World weather news, October 1996

1st
Weather officials said Calgary, Alberta (Canada), and adjacent areas received 13 cm of snow overnight, a record for early October since 1916.
3rd
A mudslide triggered by several hours of torrential rains has killed at least 16 people on the Indonesian island of Batam.
6th
A powerful volcanic eruption beneath the Vatna Jokull glacier in Iceland has formed a vast lake of boiling water that threatens to flood a wide area in the south. Water from the melting glacial ice would soon reach a critical point where it will spill over the side of the mountain, flooding the coastal plains below. Torrents of up to 30,000 cu. m of water per second can be expected to begin flowing off the south side of the glacier and into the sea at any time, experts said. The main highway encircling the island nation could be washed away by the ensuing flood. The eruption is the most powerful in Iceland since 1938.
5th-6th
South Texas residents tried to dry out on Sunday, a day after torrential rains pounded the area, killing one person. The flooding on Saturday resulted from nearly 15 inches of rain that fell around Brownsville, officials said.
7th
Tropical Storm Josephine churned across the Gulf of Mexico, dousing Florida with heavy rains and sending tornadoes spinning across the state before its expected early evening landfall. There were at least 12 reports of tornadoes in the central, western and northern parts of the state and parts of some communities. Josephine made landfall just before midnight near St Marks.
9th
Flooding in southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta has claimed 27 lives, most of them children, and is now affecting more than 1.8 million people. Flooding in the lower stretches of the Mekong River is an annual threat, often claiming scores of lives in one of the most densely populated regions of the country and in neighboring Cambodia. But Vietnam's domestic media reported that this season's water levels were approaching their highest in nearly 20 years.
9th
Several north Florida waterways were at flood stage because of heavy rain from tropical storm Josephine, but state officials said they expected no major flooding. As much as five inches of rain drenched already saturated north Florida.
9th
A man was swept away in his car by a raging torrent and feared dead after heavy rains battered northern Italy. Heavy rains on Tuesday caused several rivers in northern Italy to break their banks, flooding roads and forcing the evacuation of dozens of people from their homes. Southern Italy has also been affected.
11th
Tropical Storm Kyle emerged in the western Caribbean and was expected to buffet Honduras, Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula with gusty winds and rain, the National Hurricane Center said.
14th
Record snowfalls and unseasonally icy temperatures signalled the start of the Alaskan winter this weekend, several weeks ahead of schedule. A weekend storm blanketed Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, in 12.6 inches of snow on Saturday. Since Friday night, 17.8 inches of snow has fallen at Anchorage International Airport, a record for snowfall in the first two weeks of October.
15th
Storms have lashed northeast Colombia over the past 4 days, killing at least 12 people, and leaving hundreds of families homeless. Worst hit were Santander and Norte de Santander provinces.
15th
Flooding in southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta has spread across eight provinces, killing 64 people and placing more than two million in need of help.
16th
Floods in growing areas could delay Thai sugar cane crushing this year and output may drop below forecasts of more than 60 million tonnes.
17th
Hurricane Lili hit the Isle of Youth south of Cuba late on Thursday night on a path expected to take it onto the mainland and then over or near the Cuban capital on Friday. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds driven from their homes as rain from Lili lashed Central America.
18th
Vancouver Island residents were counting the damage early today after the worst storm in more than 30 years created power cuts, blew over trees and broke the moorings of pleasure boats. Hydro crews worked through the night to restore power to thousands of homes as sustained winds of 100 mph lashed western Vancouver Island.
18th
Hurricane Lili moved away from Cuba, where it damaged homes, disrupted power and prompted the evacuation of thousands, and sent its nearly 90 mph winds toward the Bahamas where the hurricane was expected to hit within the next 24 hours. Lili was the first major hurricane to directly pound Cuba in half a century. On Oct. 19, 1944, the last big hurricane to hit Havana killed 20. Estimates of crop damage were far from complete, but officials said citrus and banana crops were hardest hit. Cuba's famed cigar wrappers and tobacco also may have been seriously damaged by the storm.
18th
Four construction workers were feared dead after being swept away by floods spawned by tropical storm Beth. The storm crossed the northern Philippines on Thursday night. Some parts of northern Luzon were without electricity after winds toppled power lines.
19th
A strengthening Hurricane Lili scored a direct hit on the central Bahamas before moving into the Atlantic.
20th
A violent storm blamed for the death of a child in New York continued to pound New England. Officials declared a state of emergency in several north shore Massachusetts towns, evacuating residents of low-lying areas. The slow-moving storm had dumped more than 8 inches of rain in portions of the New York City-New Jersey metropolitan area.
21st
Powerful thunderstorms ripped through north Texas, wrecking dozens of homes, toppling trees and forcing the cancellation of many flights in and out of Dallas.
22nd
The death toll from recent monsoon flooding has risen to 91 with rain storms continuing to threaten southern Thailand.
22nd
A woman has drowned in the high waters of the Mur River in the province of Salzburg, bringing the total number of flood-related deaths in the country to four. Heavy, unseasonal rains in Upper and Lower Austria have kept areas along the Danube and other rivers on constant alert since the weekend, with floods in several regions reaching cellars and making streets impassable.
22nd
The death toll from torrential rains and flash floods in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh has risen to 300 with thousands left homeless in the last week.
22nd
The storm that soaked parts of the New England with more than a foot-and-a-half of rain, caused damages estimated 'in the tens of millions' of dollars, officials said. The slow-moving coastal storm produced a 36-hour pounding torrent of water that damaged bridges, washed out highways, flooded homes, closed businesses and left more than 100,000 without drinking water. Portland received 12.27 inches of rain from the storm that began late Sunday - three times what it normally gets in the entire month of October. Camp Ellis received 19.19 inches rain from the storm, which was 'perhaps the greatest storm total since precipitation records have been established for Maine,' the National Weather Service declared. Portland, Maine, also set a new record for rainfall in a 24-hour period with 10.53 inches - breaking a record of 7.75 inches in 1991 set by Hurricane Bob.
22nd
Freak hailstorms coupled with strong winds killed one person and caused substantial damage to buildings in southeastern Cyprus. Winds ripped roofs off homes, in some cases causing water tanks to crash onto parked vehicles at villages in the Famagusta district on the south eastern coast of the island.
22nd
Flash floods have killed at least 13 people and injured seven others in the Indonesian province of central Java. The flooding, triggered by several days of torrential rains, caused rivers to spill over their banks over the weekend, inundating hundreds of homes and displacing hundreds of people.
22nd
Lightning struck a boat carrying West African traders off Sierra Leone, killing at least 25 of the more than 70 passengers. The boat split in two when it was hit by a bolt of lightning 10 miles off the Sierra Leone town of Kambia.
22nd
Forty people were killed when strong winds blew down 23 houses in Baie de Henne, a village on Haiti's northwestern coast.
25th
Hurricane Lili gained strength as it neared the Azores in the Atlantic and forecasters said it could bring heavy winds and rains to Europe within three to four days.
25th
At least 100 people have been killed in southern Sudan and 8,000 made homeless by Nile River flooding following heavy rains. The disaster is taking place even though earlier this month Egypt's government ordered the opening of the High Dam's Toshki spillway to keep some of the excess river water from backing up into Sudan. Egypt had declared a state of emergency in August in its southern province of Aswan, where water behind the huge dam had risen to record levels.
28th-29th
Strong lashed parts of northern Europe during the night, felling trees, disrupting ferry and rail services and flooding coastal areas. At least seven people were killed, when trees collapsed or big waves swept over coastal defences. Gales and heavy rain pummeled Britain overnight, blocking roads and leaving thousands of homes without power. British meteorologists blamed spin-offs from Hurricane Lili, which caused widespread damage in Cuba and the Bahamas just over a week ago before finally veering eastwards over the Atlantic. Passengers and crew endured a nightmare channel crossing when their ferry, PandO's Pride of Calais, was battered by 10-metre waves and took 10 hours longer than normal to make the 75-minute Calais to Dover crossing. On Britain's south coast numerous vessels broke from their moorings. In Minehead on the Bristol Channel, huge chunks of concrete were ripped from the sea defences. A North Sea oil rig platform with 69 people on board drifted from its moorings off the coast of Scotland but was safely reconnected to a tow line. In Pembrokeshire, firemen were called in to pump out flooded properties and to make damaged roofs safe. In the southern English town of Warminster, drivers were confused after the gales blew traffic lights round the wrong way. In the low-lying Netherlands, water and shipping authorities started intensive monitoring of dikes in the southwestern province of Zeeland. Authorities predicted seas would reach 3.7 metres, a phenomenon which normally does not occur more than every five years. Max gusts reported in the UK included 80kn at North Hessary Tor (Devon) and 78kn at Alderney.
29th
A man trying to secure his camper in powerful winds near Denver, CO, was crushed to death as gusts topping 100 mph ripped the roof off a school, damaged homes and downed power lines. Such winds usually occur through the Rocky Mountain West in December and January in the presence of strong low pressure, especially when a 'closed low' formed by a winter storm system moves out as it did today.
29th
A cyclone hit Bangladesh's southwestern coastal belt early morning, destroying several hundred villages and leaving thousands of families homeless. 12 people died. State-run Radio Bangladesh reported tidal surges devastated crops on more than 30,000 acres of low-lying agricultural land.
31st
Heavy rains turned several Texas rivers into raging torrents that killed one person and forced the closure of many highways. As much as a foot of rain fell in parts of central and southwestern Texas Monday and Tuesday, rapidly filling lakes and rivers depleted by a blistering summer drought.
31st
A riverboat capsized in heavy rains in the eastern Indian state of Assam and at least 95 people were feared drowned.

World weather news, November 1996

5th
A giant lake under Europe's largest glacier in southeastern Iceland began flooding in a delayed reaction to a volcanic eruption beneath the ice cap last month. Iceland has been preparing for flooding of the uninhabited black sand plains at the foot of the Vatnajokul glacier since a volcanic eruption melted parts of the ice cap and filled the sub-glacial lake Grimsvotn to overflowing.
6th
NASA said it would try again on Thursday to launch the first of three probes bound for Mars this year after bad weather thwarted its first attempt. Mars Global Surveyor was poised for blast-off at 1:16 p.m. EST Wednesday, but gusty upper level winds halted the countdown with just over one minute to go. Thick cloud and rainshowers at Cape Canaveral Air Station earlier postponed the launch by about an hour.
6th
A hole in the ozone layer, the natural umbrella over the Earth which blocks the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, is already as big as it will ever get over the Antarctic, the WMO said. But the world should now watch out for potentially more life-threatening depletion over Europe and America, it warned. Rumen Bojkov, special adviser on ozone to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told a briefing in Geneva that up to 10 percent of the ozone had been depleted over Europe and North America by man-made chemicals in the past 20 years. The ozone hole over the Antartic is currently around 6 million square miles in area and has persisted for 50 days, according to the WMO's network of satellite and observing stations in the region. A long duration of this size was comparable with previous Antarctic spring seasons in 1993, 1994 and 1995.
7th
A powerful cyclone has hit southern India, killing at least 215 people and leaving a vast trail of destruction in its wake, reports said Thursday. The cyclone, which developed in the Bay of Bengal, hit the east and west Godavari districts of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh late Wednesday night. At least 42 people drowned when a ferry capsized in rough waters in the River Godavari, while heavy rains, powerful gale winds and tidal waves up to 12 feet high claimed more than 170 lives, the Press Trust of India reported. The forceful winds also uprooted thousands of trees, destroyed homes and disrupted train services, the report said. Telephone systems were also knocked out, making it difficult assess the full extent of the damage. The Bay of Bengal is notorious for producing heavy storms, cyclones and other turbulent weather, which lash the western coast of India and Bangladesh. Each year, hundreds of people die in tidal waves and floods caused by cyclones in the bay.
7th
Iceland put the estimated damage bill from flooding caused by a sub-glacial volcano at around $16.5 million and scientists warned that more eruptions were possible in the remote area. The melt flow from a lake in southeastern Iceland under the Vatnajokull icefield, Europe's largest glacier, was returning to normal two days after a torrent of black sulphurous water and debris flooded an uninhabitated plain, media reports said.
8th
Indian authorities scrambled to launch rescue operations after up to 2,000 people were feared killed by a cyclone that lashed the country's southeastern coast on Thursday. Damage was put at $1.5 billion dollars.
8th
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes raced across Georgia, USA, before dawn, damaging several homes and businesses and injuring at least 19 people.
10th
Disaster officials raised an alert in the northern Philippines after a tropical storm left 16 dead and damaged or destroyed almost 2,500 homes in central provinces. Dale, packing maximum winds of 108 mph, is moving northwest at 16 mph. Typhoon Ernie also left hundreds of families homeless in the southern provinces of Zamboanga del Sur and Zamboanga del Norte, as heavy rains swept away houses and forced residents to evacuate.
10th
Areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania that border Lake Erie were cleaning up from the first major snowstorm of the year, a winter blast that triggered widespread power cuts in the Cleveland area and threatened continued trouble by resuming later in the night.
11th
Australia defended its livestock trade after a ship carrying 1,600 head of cattle sank over the weekend in a typhoon off the island of Guam. The 20-man crew of the 'Guernsey Express' spent six hours in a lifeboat before being rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. The ship took water and sank after a battering from 180 mph winds whipped up by Typhoon Dale.
11th
Three children were crushed to death by collapsing walls when a violent hailstorm ravaged a town in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. The storm injured 25 others and destroyed at least 40 homes as it pelted the town of Utinga for an hour and a half on Monday night.
11th
Winds with gusts of up to 90 mph blew over a heavy railway car in the Swiss Alps, injuring four tourists. The accident occurred at about 6,500 feet, as around 90 tourists and workers were coming down from Europe's highest railway station at 11,300 ft. It was the first such incident since the rail link opened in 1893 on the Jungfraujoch mountain in the Bernese Oberland. The vehicle was a double locomotive weighing 50 tons.
12th
An active Low centred over France brought extremely contrasting weather across Germany. In the west, copious rainfall lead to localised flooding. Up to 80mm fell in the Saarland. Meanwhile, S. Bavaria has been sheltered by the lee effect of the Alps with another strong Foehn event. The maximum temperature in Munich on the 12th was an outstanding 19.1 C, breaking the date-record set in 1969 by a whole degree! This brings the total number of exceptionally warm November days in 1996 to 4.
12th
The earliest heavy snow storm in 32 years in Ohio, USA, was entering its fourth night on Tuesday. The dead of winter, occurring in the middle of November, started Saturday - bringing northeast Ohioans full circle, from raking leaves Saturday morning to shovelling snow Saturday night. One Cleveland suburban area reported 43 inches of snow on the ground by Tuesday afternoon.
13th
Five people have died in flooding after heavy rains that also inundated 22 village in the northern Caspian province of Mazandaran, Iran.
14th
Just 2 days after reaching a maximum temperature of 19.1C, Munich (Germany) awoke to a slight snow cover. It snowed/sleeted all day and accumulated to about 2 cms in the suburbs, despite undergoing steady melting. 33mm of rainwater equivalent fell in 30 hours or so.
14th
Some 800 people have been evacuated as a precautionary measure from homes in eastern Cuba as heavy rains lashed most of the island. The bad weather, which began at the weekend and was expected to continue at least for the next 24 hours, followed extensive damage to crops last month when Hurricane Lili hit western and central areas of the country.
14th
Two children have died and two adults are missing in flooding caused by three days of intense rain in northern Honduras. Some 2,000 inhabitants have been evacuated after the Chamelecon and Ulua rivers overflowed their banks, affecting the towns of Urraco, La Lima, Chamelecon, San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortes.
14th
Torrential rain has toppled at least 36 houses and swamped 20 others in three central and southern Egyptian provinces. The rain, which intensified late Wednesday, caused the collapse of nearly 20 houses in Aswan province, about 920 km south of Cairo.
15th
Freezing rain coated streets and highways with a dangerous layer of ice across the Great Plains, USA, causing at least one traffic death. near Plankinton, S.D., resulting in one death. Freezing rain swept across parts of the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, glazing trees and power lines and knocking out electricity to some residents. Farther west in Colorado's skiing areas, up to 15cm of snow was forecast.
15th
Heavy rain and wind lashed Cuba, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes, damaging hundreds of houses and delaying a trip to Rome by President Fidel Castro.
15th
Much of Florida, USA became a virtual wind tunnel with gusts of up to 50 mph burying some coastal roads in sand and briefly knocking out power to more than 6,000 homeowners, but no injuries were reported.
17th
Two children died in northern Italy when the caravan they were sleeping in was struck by lightning and burst into flames.
17th
Heavy snowfall and high winds sealed off the Canada-U.S. border overnight and brought Winnepeg to a virtual standstill. Winds up to 45mph and 12ins of snow were reported.
18th
At least five people were killed near Brescia (Italy) after their van skidded off a road into a lake. Wet road conditions were believed to be the cause of the accident as heavy rainstorms lashed the country. Venice was under more than three feet of flood water and rivers were overflowing in many parts of central and northern Italy.
18th
A tropical depression formed off the northeast coast of Nicaragua Monday and could strengthen into Tropical Storm Marco within a day or two, the National Hurricane Center said.
19th
All small boats on Colombia's Caribbean islands of San Andres and Providencia were warned by the Meteorological Institute to stay in port as a nearby tropical storm whipped up winds of 70 mph.
19th
Heavy snow across parts of Wales and northern England. In Denbighshire about 25cm reported, the greatest since the blizzard of 8 Jan 1982. At London Heathrow Airport the pressure fell to about 967mb, quite low for November.
16th-19th
At least five people were killed and more than 100,000 homes were left without power by the storm that dumped rain and snow across the Pacific Northwest. Wet along the Oregon coast (USA) with 10.58ins of rain in 4 days at Florence. The storm caused major flooding in the SW quadrant of Oregon; some rivers flooded as badly or worse than in February 1996; mudslides closed roads and killed at least five people; the wind caused power cuts. On the 18th Yakima (annual rainfall normally 8 inches) reported 2 inches of rain.
19th
A very deep depression crossed New Zealand. Extreme low pressure records for November were broken in many places. At both Christchurch and Timaru 971.8mb was recorded, breaking the previous all-time low readings at both places. The lowest pressure ever recorded in New Zealand is 954mbar at Taiaroa Head on 16 January 1939, while the highest ever recorded was 1046mbar at Wellington on 30 August 1889.
19th
At least 12 people have been killed, homes swept aside and farmland flooded as torrential rain continues to batter southern and central Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.
20th
Marco, a tropical storm with top winds of 70 mph, stalled in the Caribbean south of Jamaica but was expected to resume its journey toward the island by Thursday. The storm has already caused havoc in Central America and the Dominican Republic, where a number of people have been reported killed and thousands affected by flooding from heavy rain.
21st
A low pressure system over Tennessee moved eastwards and gave a snowfall of 4 ins over the Shenandoah Valley. Partly cloud skies and temperatures above 5C had been forecast.
21st
Tropical Storm Marco's threat to Jamaica eased but emergency workers remained on high alert for torrential rains as the weather system meandered in the Caribbean south of the island.
22nd
A South African farmer in a rubber boat saved 14 school children after their truck was washed away in a raging river, but three others and the driver were missing. Emergency services in the region remained on full alert as heavy rains swelled rivers and dams, posing a threat to residents of low-lying areas. On the country's south coast near the town of George, about 40 British tourists were stranded on a steam train after floods washed away railway lines.
23rd
Marco, once a hurricane and twice a tropical storm, weakened rapidly and was downgraded to a tropical depression. Officials said major flooding caused by weather surrounding tropical storm Marco had already taken at least eight lives in Central America and the Dominican Republic.
23rd
Honduras declared a state of emergency in a northern area where torrential rain and floods have drowned at least 10 people and driven more than 63,000 others from their homes. Crops, bridges and highways were also destroyed by the flooding, caused by 10 days of pounding rains.
23rd
A newly published study of New England frost patterns suggests weather was a major cause of the American Revolution because undependable growing seasons hurt crop production. The study, 'Growing Season Parameter Reconstructions for New England Using Killing Frost Records, 1697-1947,' by David C Smith and colleagues, found that in the 30-year period before the American Revolution, there were 22 short and poor crop growing seasons and seven longer and good seasons, he said. 'Poor weather and crops and then come the British - it was a tinderbox,' he said. The study asserts in some New England areas, the growing season during the 250-year period could last for almost 200 days one year and drop to nearly half that length the next.
23rd-25th
An unusually slow moving upper level trough and cold pool have been responsible for substantial falls of rain on the New South Wales Mid North Coast and Northern Tablelands over the weekend. Falls in the three days to 0900 local time Monday include Coffs Harbour 298mm and Comboyne 331mm. Only minor flooding was reported in streams in the area due to the protracted period over which rain fell and the fact that catchments were dry after below average rainfall in recent months.
24th-26th
Snowstorms, ice and frigid temperatures from Texas across the U.S. Midwest have caused at least 19 deaths since Sunday and triggered power cuts affecting thousands.
25th
Hot dry northwesterly winds swept across Victoria and Tasmania bringing termperatures up to 12 degrees above average for November. Late last week, Tasmania was experiencing snowfalls down to the 500m level; at 3pm local time, Hobart's city temperature was 29.6C.
26th
In a summary of the 1996 Atlantic hurricane season, and the verification of their prediction, WM Gray and co-workers said the season was characterized by very high hurricane activity, particularly of major hurricanes. There were a total of 13 named storms (average 9.3) and 9 hurricanes (average 5.8). They underforecast this very active hurricane season, which they put down largely to a continuing (since late 1994) long period basic shift in Northern and Southern Atlantic sea surface temperature conditions which they did not account for. 'The North Atlantic surface temperatures have warmed and the South Atlantic surface temperatures have cooled since 1994. This is indicative of an increase in the Atlantic's thermohaline or conveyor belt circulation from its typical diminished strength of the last 25-30 years.'
25th-27th
Workers began to repair roads, bridges and power cables in southern Jordan where flash floods have killed at least 3 people. An unprecedented 30-minute downpour in the Wadi Mousa district, 185 miles south of Amman, caused the death of three people on the 25th. The floods were said to be the worst in 50 years.
25th
Heavy snow brought traffic to a near standstill in Hamburg and on the motorway towards Luebeck. Over 30cm fell on the Lueneburger Heide. Snow stuck on the hills immediately south of the coast, but the effect of the still warm Baltic sea kept the coastline itself snow-free.
28th
Worsening drought has intensified northwest China's critical water shortage, triggering a long-term search for more underground sources for consumption and irrigation, officials said.
28th
One person was killed and four injured when a house collapsed after a heavy rainfall in the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah. For the past three weeks, the western and southern parts of Saudi Arabia have been subjected to unusually heavy rains.
30th
Thousands of people began to evacuate India's Andhra Pradesh state as the second cyclonic storm in three weeks threatened to lash its coast.
30th
Disaster officials rushed relief and rescue operations into the central Philippine province of Catanduanes after strong rains triggered landslides and flash floods that killed at least 13 people and injured three others.
30th
A cyclonic storm in the Bay of Bengal that threatened to lash southeastern India appeared to veer away and head towards Bangladesh.

World weather news, December 1996

2nd
Five Brazilian children were killed and five adults injured when heavy rains caused a hillside to collapse and bury their homes in an eastern Sao Paulo slum.
2nd
Two people drowned and dozens of towns and villages in southern Bulgaria were flooded after heavy rains caused several rivers to spill over their banks. The civil defence service has declared a state of emergency in the southern towns of Zlatograd, 160 miles south of Sofia, and Nedlino, where dozens of houses are under water.
2nd
Moscow, normally under a thick blanket of snow by now, is experiencing its warmest winter on record and the weather will stay mild for the first weeks of December, the Russian Meteorological Center said. Snow cover will not begin until around mid-December, he said. In Russia, snow cover means that snow must lie on the ground for not less than five consecutive days. In the past 117 years - since records have been regularly kept - snow cover has never come later than Dec. 1 to the center of the Russian capital. The average temperature this November was about 5.5C above normal.
3rd
Heavy snow in parts of Scotland and northern England; in southern areas of Scotland snow and ice brought down power cables -- some isolated homes remained without power for a week as blocked roads made it impossible for repair crews to make progress.
4th
Coloradans (in the USA) fought sub-zero wind chill readings as gusts in excess of 50 mph whipped parts of the state and a 100 mph gust hit the ski resort of Eldora.
5th
A powerful cyclone that threatened to lash India's southeast coast today has weakened and is now seen moving away slightly, meteorological officials said.
6th
California's weather woes have benefitted nut traders of Iran and Turkey. A looming shortage has pushed up prices of almonds and pistachios, while the cost of hazlenuts has jumped by 35 percent after the Turkish government intervened to bolster prices. Good quality almonds are almost sold out and prices are up 20 percent in the past six weeks following a poor Californian crop for the second year running.
6th
Widespread flooding from two weeks of continual rain in Venezuela has left an estimated 10,000 people homeless and increased the risk of cholera outbreaks. Several Venezuelan states have declared a state of emergency, as rivers overflowed their banks in the country's coastal areas.
6th
A prolonged drought in central Chile has led authorities to encourage water conservation as shortages began affecting the capital. Rainfall in Chile this year remains 40 percent to 50 percent below normal. The drought has led to severe shortages in Santiago, where residents have been lining up on the streets to obtain water from special water trucks.
6th
Fourteen workers were missing and at least 12 others were injured in a mudslide and flash flood that struck two work crews near the Yubara road tunnel in central Japan.
6th
A powerful cyclone hit India's southeast coast but then began to weaken. The storm crossed into the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Airport authorities in Madras said that most evening flights to and from the city had been cancelled.
8th
A motorist was missing after his car was swept away overnight in a flash flood as heavy rains lashed south-west France. Dozens of homes were flooded and their inhabitants evacuated by rubber dinghy in several towns including Beziers as rivers flooded their banks. The rains cut rail links and roads over a wide area near the Mediterranean coast.
8th
A snowstorm that dumped up to 18 inches of heavy wet snow in parts of New England left more than 160,000 homes without power.
9th
Ten people have died of exposure in Hyderabad, central Pakistan. Pakistan is undergoing an early winter cold snap, with temperatures close to freezing in many parts of the interior.
9th
Flooding along Northern California creeks shut down schools in Eureka, forced some evacuations in the town of Ferndale, and closed a 15-mile section of Highway 101 on the North Coast. Creeks and drain systems were overwhelmed by 5 to 14 inches of rain in a 36-hour period.
13th
Severe floods swept through three provinces in Indonesia, killing at least 14 people and forcing more than 10,000 people from their homes in Sumatra, Java and East Timor.
14th
Russian reindeer are dying by the thousands because unusual weather has covered their grazing grounds in extreme northeastern Siberia with a thick layer of ice. On the Chukotka peninsula 6,200 reindeer have starved to death because of icy conditions this autumn. Warm November weather brought rain instead of snow. Colder temperatures then froze the rainfall into a sheet of ice too tough for the reindeer to break with their hooves. Russians and indigenous people in Chukotka eat reindeer meat and make money selling pelts and other parts of the animals. Ground reindeer horn is used in medicines.
14th
An early-season blizzard packing 60 mph wind gusts and up to a foot of snow hit the Black Hills area of South Dakota and parts of Wyoming this morning.
14th
Residents of Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin were digging out from their first major snowstorm of the winter... which dumped up to 14 inches of snow on the states after earlier striking in South Dakota and Wyoming.
14th
In a recent issue of the Lancet medical journal, New Zealand scientists say that global warming could bring about dengue fever epidemics in the South Pacific. Research conducted by Simon Hales of the Wellington School of Medicine and colleagues, attributed the mosquito-borne disease, generally occurring after floods in tropical zones such as Southeast Asia, China and Cuba, to climate change caused by the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Hales compared data from previous studies on dengue to El Nino and its effects, which demonstrated that the higher the Southern Oscillation Index the greater the instances of dengue fever.
16th
Thousands of homes have no power after a windstorm in Southern California. The winds, which exceeded 100 mph in some places, disrupted power to 400,000 homes and businesses in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura Counties near Los Angeles.
16th
Three German skiers died in an avalanche Monday in the mountain wilderness near the Canadian resort of Whistler, British Columbia, officials said.
16th
US Federal health officials warned that colder weather seems to increase the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Doctors still do not understand the cause of the mysterious ailment that kills 4,000 to 5,000 U.S. babies without warning each year. But the National Institute of Child Health and Development says winter seems to be the riskiest time for sudden death in infants under a year of age. The increase may come from the greater risk of infection during cold months or from accidentally wrapping babies too warmly.
16th
A severe winter storm engulfed the northern U.S. plains, paralyzing traffic, closing schools and stranding thousands in their homes amid white-out conditions and bitter cold temperatures. Snowdrifts as deep as four feet closed major roads in the Dakotas, and authorities said many roads may not be reopened until Wednesday because snowploughs have been unable to keep up with the drifts.
18th
The ancient Sahara Desert was wet, green, and wild to a degree never before imagined. The findings by University of Wisconsin, Madison, researchers suggest the Sahara and Sahel regions of northern Africa 12,000 to 5,000 years ago differed vastly from what scientists have until now envisaged. With a slight shift in Earth's orbit ages ago, powerful summer monsoons started sweeping through what is now one of the driest places on earth. They moistened the soil and spawned vegetation. The vegetation and soil changes actually enhanced the effects of the orbital shift...increasing the annual precipitation by as much as 10 percent. The vegetation and soil encouraged water retention and recycling - rather than water loss by runoff. The combined forces brought a 25 percent more total rainfall to the region than it gets today.
18th
The season's first big winter blast is shattering temperature records in the Rockies, stalling air and auto travel across the Upper Midwest. In Colorado, Pueblo's -19F was a record for the date and -11F in Colorado Springs smashed the 122-year-old mark of -4F.
20th
State agriculture officials say Florida's citrus crop escaped the below-freezing temperatures that had been forecast for Friday morning. Although the Panhandle area recorded its first hard freeze of the year, temperatures across most of central Florida's citrus belt remained above 32F, leaving the state's $1 billion citrus crop unharmed.
21st
Three people aged 70 and over died in the northern district of Rangpur as a cold wave swept across Bangladesh. Local media reports temperatures in Rangpur have plummeted, exposing thousands of elderly villagers to hypothermia.
22nd
President Fidel Ramos has released 2.5 million pesos for relief operations in a southern Philippine province hit by flash floods that have killed one person and affected at least 5,000 families. The deluge triggered by continuous rainfall since last week also swamped the nearby city of Dapitan and the towns of Polanco and Pinan.
22nd
The Sierra Nevada got a second day of near record snowfall, closing highways through the mountains between California and Nevada and bringing weekend accumulations to as much as seven feet. The California Highway Patrol says bad road conditions have caused hundreds of accidents, and one traffic death on Saturday was blamed on the weather.
23rd
Indonesian President Suharto is urging citizens that the possibility of a prolonged drought next year could cause forest fires and crop damage. In the past few years major fires ravaged several Indonesian forests and crop lands, causing heavy smoke to blanket parts of southeast Asia. In 1994 haze from the burning forest and cropland led to the suspension of airline flights into and out of various Indonesian provinces. And it caused several river and road accidents and claimed the lives of several people.
25th-26th
A storm has lashed the east Malaysian state of Sabah, killing at least 162 people and causing widespread flooding, damaging buildings and sinking boats. The winds and rain that lashed Sabah were spawned by Tropical Storm Greg, which moved from the South China Sea onto the west coast of Sabah with top winds gusting at over 30 kmph.
26th
Venice spent Christmas under water for only the second time this century as heavy rains and high seas caused the lagoon city to flood. Local authorities said water levels reached 1.11 metres above the normal tide level on Christmas Day and added that although conditions improved on Thursday, St Mark's Square remained flooded. Venice last spent Christmas under water in 1973. It was the ninth time this year that the waters in this northern Italian city had risen above the 1.1 metre level. St Mark's Square, which is the lowest point in the city, has been flooded on 99 days so far this year.
25th=28th
Arctic air dominated the weather in Southern Alberta in the week of Christmas; in Calgary the 25th was sunny with a bright blue sky and a high of -18C. The coldest day was the 28th, again under clear skies but with a keen N wind a high of -31C occurred.
25th
Three people were killed and at least 10 injured as a result of heavy rains in the city of Nova Friburgo in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state. Three people drowned in their homes on Wednesday night when the river Bengala, which runs through Nova Friburgo, flooded the houses along its banks. The heavy rains lasted about 90 minutes and the river swept away several houses.
26th
A 57-year-old homeless man and a 77-year-old retired man who lived alone in a camper were found dead of cold in the Paris area, bringing to three the death toll in France from a two-day cold snap. (26th)
26th
A sudden cold snap has killed at least two people in Moscow and is likely to claim more lives as it settles in across much of Russia. The weather service says temperatures dipping to minus -26C are 10degC below the seasonal average for Moscow. The cold weather follows a long warm spell that had Russians wondering when winter would arrive. buildings.
26th
A freak ice storm struck the Portland (Oregon) area, coating trees, power lines and just about everything else with a thick coating of ice, and Washington was lashed with a powerful winter storm that lowered visibility to near zero in some places. The weight of the ice toppled power poles and sent tree limbs smashing into power lines, leaving about 70,000 customers without electricity. The Portland airport was forced to use backup generator power for a couple of hours.
26th
Blizzards left almost 400 Bulgarian towns and villages without electricity, cut telephone links in 110 communities and halted traffic at most major airports. Airports in Sofia, Varna and Bourgas were closed. The only operating airport is in the country's second city, Plovdiv, 100 miles southeast of Sofia.
26th
Blizzards swept across Romania disrupting road and rail transport and shipping on the river Danube and in the Black Sea. Traffic on roads in eastern Romania was blocked by heavy snow bringing freight traffic to a halt in the area and forcing many motorists to abandon their cars.
27th
Indonesia's state-run media say the flash floods that have swept the country's eastern province of East Nusa Tenggara have killed at least three people and left many missing. The floods, caused by three days of incessant rains, pushed rivers over their banks and inundated thousands of homes in the Timor island.
27th
At least five people have now died of hypothermia in in France as bone-chilling temperatures continue to grip the country. Over the past three days, three other people have died of the cold in Paris and one in the northwestern city of Brest.
27th
Four patients have died at an unheated Bulgarian mental hospital during extreme cold weather in the past two days. Radnevo hospital's medical director said two of the four patients had died directly from the cold. The hospital has been without heating for the past 10 days.
27th
Hundreds of thousands of people are without electricity in Oregon and Washington and some major highways are blocked from a winter storm that hit the West Coast. In Seattle, the largest city in the affected region, only half a foot of snow fell overnight, but icy conditions downed power lines and disabled 10 percent of the city's Metro rail coaches. About 150,000 customers in Thurston, Pierce and King counties in Washington had no power as new snow fell Friday morning.
27th
More than 300 people were trapped in a Caucasus mountains tunnel in southern Russia after avalanches blocked roads in the area. There were no reports of casualties but fog was preventing helicopters bringing relief to car and bus travellers forced to a halt by the snow. About 120 vehicles were caught in the 2.5-mile Roksky tunnel, Tass said. The 10,000-foot high Roksky pass crosses the main Caucasus ridge between the Russian region of North Ossetia and the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.
28th
Italy, which enjoyed spring-like weather just a week ago, faced a country-wide cold spell Saturday as temperatures dipped as low as -22F (measured at Livigno) in some parts of the country. Snowstorms hit the central regions of the Marche, Umbria and Abruzzo as well as in the south in Puglia and the Aeolian islands off Sicily. The cold spell also left much of the Venice lagoon frozen. Television showed fishermen and gondoliers struggling to break the ice around their boats in the northeast city.
28th
An avalanche has killed at least six Turkish teenagers as they were skiing in eastern Turkey. The avalanche in Erzurum Province, appeared to have been triggered by a ski-track vehicle driving along the wrong path of a downhill ski course.
29th
Another snow storm has rolled into the Pacific Northwest dumping more snow, ice and rain on weather-weary residents while utility crews scrambled to restore power knocked out by a previous storm. Northern California continues to dry out from storms last week that caused blizzard conditions in the Sierra Nevada. Five people died in the storms.
29th
Bitter cold killed a homeless man in Leipzig and ice halted shipping on major waterways. He was believed to be the first fatality of the year-end cold snap that has brought temperatures down to -20C in some parts of Germany. The shipping authorities in Magdeburg said more than 200 km of the River Elbe would be closed at midnight from its confluence with the Saale down to Doemitz near Dannenberg.
29th
Sections of the Danube river in central Europe were frozen over, as were major canal waterways in northern Germany, while a freak blizzard deposited up to four inches of snow along Croatia's unsually balmy Dalmatian coast on the Adriatic. People on the French Mediterranean resort island of Corsica awoke to see snow covering the landscape for the first time in a decade. Divers found four people dead inside the Greek cargo ship Distos which had capsized off the Greek island of Evia in bad weather in the Aegean Sea. Sixteen others aboard were missing. The frozen bodies of three men were found over the weekend in Poland, bringing to 13 the number of deaths since the cold snap began. Most of the victims were intoxicated. Temperatures have touched -25C (-18F) in Romania in the last three days and snow and blizzards have disrupted rail and road traffic and shipping.
29th
Scores of drivers are thought to be stranded in a heavy snowstorm in British Columbia, where drifting snow has blocked highways in several areas. With reports coming in of more than 60 cm of snow on the ground in the lower mainland area by Sunday afternoon, snow drifts are report to have blocked highways between Abbotsford and Chilliwack.
30th
Thousands of holidaymakers fled their campsites and civil defence officials declared emergencies in some regions as the remnants of tropical Cyclone Fergus lashed New Zealand. Thousands of people fled the popular resorts of the Bay of Islands and Coromandel Peninsula at the height of the summer holiday season, but many had their escape routes blocked as floods closed major highways.
30th
Poland reported its coldest weather for 10 years, with 17 deaths recorded in the past week. Scandinavia and Russia, well used to hard winters, have seen colder weather and heavier snow than in recent years. Tass news agency reported a total of 10 people dead in Russia with 245 hospitalized with frostbite. Snow and ice also paralyzed much of central and southern Italy, with people using skis to get around the Umbrian capital of Perugia and the normally mild southerly regions of Calabria and Puglia also snow-bound. Temperatures in Austria have hit their lowest for 30 years. Two people have been reported killed by the cold.
30th
Homeowners have got out their snow shovels as Vancouver and much of southwestern British Columbia lay blanketed in white after the worst snowstorm in the province in several decades. In Victoria, even less used to snow than Vancouver, residents were likewise busy with shovels, but the city remained virtually paralyzed by snow which accumulated nearly 75 cm since the snowstorm began on Friday.
30th
Mild Pacific air surfaced along the eastern edge of the Rockies and while in Calgary it was dark and cloudy with a high of -24C, 40 miles to the west it was sunny with a gusty west wind with temperatures in the +4 to +5C range. At the town of Pincher Creek in the exteme SW corner of the province, tucked into the foothills, the temperature rose from -20C at 8.30 am to +2C at 9:00am! According to Environment Canada this may have been the biggest temperature swing in such a short time ever recorded.
31st
Dense fog is being blamed for a 70- vehicle pileup that killed a woman and injured at least a dozen other motorists east of New Orleans (USA).

If you have a snippet of weather news that you feel merits inclusion, then please feel free to email it to me.
Last updated 28 September 2015.