World weather news

World weather news, December 2010

1st: Thunderstorms, high winds and tornadoes ripped through southern states of the USA injuring at least 30 people, destroying buildings, toppling trees, flooding highways and forcing schools to close. At least 11 tornadoes touched down in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, In the town of Atlanta, Louisiana, a tornado wiped out a 4,000 square-foot, two story brick house. That tornado was classified as a category four, with winds as high as 200 miles per hour, Trumbla said. A category five is the most powerful rating for a tornado.
1st: Heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures disrupted road, rail and air transport in many parts of northern Europe on Wednesday while the Mediterranean island of Cyprus suffered in the heat after its driest November in more than a century. Temperatures in parts of Germany reached a record -18C for December 1 and there has been heavy snowfall. Flights at Frankfurt airport, one of Europe's chief hubs, were disrupted. There was a markedly different picture, however, in southern Europe where Cyprus is experiencing temperatures in the upper 20s, some 5C higher than the seasonal average. "This November has been the driest since 1901. The average precipitation was zero," said Marios Theofilou of the Meteorological Service. cross the Mediterranean, Israelis enjoyed T-shirt weather throughout November, wondering when winter would arrive as temperatures stuck stubbornly in the low to mid 30s Celsius. It was also the driest November in 60 years, with rabbis praying for rain. The water level in the Sea of Galilee, source of much of Israel's fresh water, is a metre below the red line. Forecasters say the dry spell will continue. On Wednesday, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem had blue skies with temperatures in the mid 20s. Northern Italy saw major snowfalls on Wednesday, while in Rome, water levels on the Tiber have risen by 110cm in a single day following heavy rain. The river is close to overflowing in some areas.
2nd: A snowstorm blanketed the northeastern United States, shutting down an interstate highway near Buffalo, New York and leaving motorists stranded for more than 12 hours. Some drivers spent the night in their cars and trucks as long lines of vehicles filled Interstate 90. Up to 60cm of snow fell in some areas in just 24 hours, according to local reports.
2nd: More than 30 people have been killed in floods and landslides in Venezuela. The heavy rains during the past month have continued well past the usual end of the wet season in Venezuela.
2nd: Heavy snow caused havoc across Britain, keeping airports closed for a second day, leaving travellers stranded and forcing thousands of schools to close. Days of sub-zero temperatures and snow have caused chaos and could be costing the economy 1.2 billion pounds a day, according to insurer RSA. Gatwick, the country's second busiest airport, said it would remain closed until at least 6 a.m. on Friday because of more heavy snowfalls. Edinburgh airport said it hoped to reopen at 4 p.m. on Thursday, while London's smaller City Airport said it would stay closed until 2 p.m. Eurostar, which runs train services connecting Britain to France and Belgium, said it would be operating a "significantly reduced timetable on Thursday" because of the bad weather. Ice also created hazardous conditions on roads across the country, with two people being killed when a car collided with a Royal Mail van in Cumbria early on Thursday, police said. Around 200 drivers spent a second night sleeping in their vehicles or at a nearby village hall in Yorkshire while passengers on a train to Brighton had to sleep in the carriages. More than 7,000 schools across England were closed and many expected to stay shut on Friday, some for the fourth day in a row.
2nd: Heavy snow caused travel chaos across much of northern Europe on Thursday, keeping London's Gatwick airport closed for a second day and disrupting road and rail travel in France, Germany and Switzerland. France's SNCF state rail company told travellers to expect delays of an hour or so on many services and cancellation of two in 10 trains between Paris and the south-east. In Germany, scores of flights were cancelled and many delayed at airports in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin. Berlin suffered road and rail disruptions and temperatures were forecast to fall as far as -20C in parts of the country on Thursday. Motorists were stranded for several hours on one motorway in the western state of Hesse overnight. Geneva's Cointrin airport reopened on Thursday after the heaviest snowfall in decades closed its only runway for nearly 36 hours. Hundreds of stranded passengers spent a second night in the airport or in civil protection shelters. Some of the heaviest snowfall was in western Switzerland, which disrupted rail and road traffic, creating chaos for commuters. The Interior Ministry said 18 people had died in Poland over the past two days due to the severe weather, which has also disrupted air, road and rail traffic. Wintry weather kills dozens of homeless or drunk people in Poland each year. A power plant broke down in Leszno near Warsaw on Thursday, depriving some 20,000 people of heating and hot water. Some flights to and from Warsaw were cancelled. About 30cm of snow fell in the Czech capital Prague, snarling transport and shutting the international airport. Seven flights were cancelled and 40 delayed, officials said. The main links between the Czech Republic and Germany and between Prague and the second largest city of Brno in the east were clogged with traffic. Heavy rain caused rivers to overflow and flood areas of Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro. In Albania's northern Shkoder region, 1,000 people were evacuated as water rose above 2m. Serbian authorities declared a state of emergency in the western town of Ljubovija where the Drina river overflowed and across Bosnia, hundreds of people were evacuated from villages that had been isolated, with no electricity, by the rising water.
8th: Temperatures dipped into the low 30s (F) for much of Florida's orange-growing region early on Wednesday but it did not appear to have gotten cold enough to damage the crop, weather reports indicated. Overnight lows were generally a bit warmer than the previous night as a two-day cold snap began to moderate, the National Weather Service said. Fruit damage occurs if temperatures are 28F or lower for at least four hours. Lows were in the low 30s for most of the central Florida counties where the groves are concentrated but dipped to 28F in one city in Polk County, which is state's top orange producer.
8th-9th: Travellers in Paris and Frankfurt slept at the airport after snow and ice caused travel chaos. Many European commuters suffered through traffic jams on slushy streets Thursday, and Scotland even called in the army to clear the snow. Flights out of Paris and Frankfurt were still delayed after bad weather forced the temporary closing of airports a day earlier. On Thursday, delays of up to an hour persisted at Charles de Gaulle. Some passengers huddled under blankets after a long night sleeping at the airport. The Eiffel Tower's first floor reopened to tourists, a day after it was entirely shut down. Officials say they can't use salt there because it could cause damage to the monument. Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux asked drivers to leave their vehicles at home after 10cm of snow fell on Paris, the most since 1987. A combination of snow, rain and temperatures hovering right around the freezing point caused traffic chaos in Germany, with hundreds of accidents reported nationwide and scores of miles-long (kilometers-long) traffic jams. One person died in a crash in Rhineland-Palatinate, along the French border. Airport officials said at least 650 flights were canceled in Germany, including 200 in Berlin and 450 at Frankfurt, whose airport was shut down for four hours overnight. Scotland, meanwhile, called in the army on Thursday to help clear snow and ice after the heaviest snowfall since 1963 paralyzed the country's capital.
9th: A sudden heavy snowfall caused long delays and hundreds of road accidents across Bosnia-Herzegovina. A cold weather front also brought a rapid fall in temperatures, as much as 18C in three hours in places. The air temperature in Banja Luka fell from a very mild high of 20C at midday Thursday, just three hours before the snow set in, to a low of -5C under clear skies Thursday night. The rapid change to colder weather followed some of the region's worst flooding for around one hundred years. Heavy rainfall caused several Bosnian rivers to burst their banks last week. The River Drina that flows along the border between Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro caused the most damage and forced thousands of evacuations.
9th: Australia declared 45 communities along the country's east coast disaster areas Friday, following weeks of drenching rains that have submerged homes, destroyed crops and killed four people. Despite years of drought, December's heavy rains have brought misery to the region. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes, and officials have been scrambling to pluck stranded motorists from cars and surround vulnerable homes and businesses with sandbags. 10cm of rain fell on the southern New South Wales city of Queanbeyan in one night, causing the community's swollen river to overflow and flood the downtown area. This has been the most significant flooding in Queanbeyan in 30 years,
11th-14th: A strong storm grazed the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula, dropping over 90cm of snow. Samcheok, South Korea measured 100cm during the course of the storm, the largest storm accumulation measured in South Korea since records began in 1911. It was reported that one rural city received 80cm of snow in 24 hours - potentially a new South Korean record for snowfall in a single day. The South Korean military sent 12,000 soldiers to assist stranded motorists and trapped residents in the region, and officials in the Gangwon province mobilized 22,600 volunteers and 1,750 snow ploughs to clear highways. Property damages were estimated at 4.3 million U.S. dollars. There were 80 flights canceled and 40 delayed at Gimhae International Airport and roads were closed in and around the nearby port city of Busan. The heavy snow arrived on the heels of South Korea's coolest January since the 1960s.
11th-14th: The "Pineapple Express" - a meteorological event where southwest winds bring warm, moist air to the U.S. West Coast - produced record rainfall to the Pacific Northwest during December 11th-12th. Seattle experienced record rainfall two days in a row. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport recorded 1.42 inches of rain on the 11th, breaking the old daily record of 1.32 inches set in 1955. The next day, 2.19 inches fell, breaking the daily record of 1.70 inches set in 1966. The Stillaguamish River in western Washington state reached 6.42m at Arlington, tying the record set in November 2006. Flood stage for the river is 4.3m. The storm system also brought record warmth to the area. On December 14th, the temperature at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport reached 57F, breaking the old daily record of 55F set in 2004.
12th: Heavy rains and fierce winds pummeled countries across the Middle East over the weekend, sinking a ship off Israel's coast and killing a woman in Lebanon whose car was crushed when a tree fell on it. The storm brought unusually cold temperatures, below freezing in some spots. It ended weeks of unseasonably warm and dry weather that contributed to dozens of forest fires in Lebanon and helped feed a massive blaze in Israel that destroyed thousands of hectares of forest. It whipped up sandstorms in Jordan and Egypt, which closed its largest Mediterranean port. In Syria, snow blanketed the streets of Damascus for the first time this winter. Schools sent students home early and children ventured outside to play in the streets. Heavy rains flooded the streets in Beirut and snow forced some road closures in remote mountain towns in Lebanon. A woman died Saturday night when an uprooted tree fell on her car in the northern port city of Tripoli, authorities said. Flights in and out of Beirut's international airport were delayed. Off the Israeli coast, a Moldovan cargo ship sank in stormy weather about 11km off the port city of Ashdod, and a Turkish ship was safely towed two miles to shore after sending out distress calls. The storm briefly disrupted operations at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport. Israel's two main seaports, Haifa and Ashdod, were closed through the day because of high seas and roaring winds. Egypt was hit by rain and winds up to 60km/h in Alexandria on the northern Mediterranean coast. Sandstorms blanketed Cairo for a second day Sunday, choking the air with dust and turning the sky a tepid beige. Doormen and shopkeepers tried in vain to keep the swirling dust at bay, sweeping sidewalks and dusting off parked cars. Jordan also wrestled with sandstorms kicked up by winds up to 90km/h.
13th: Civil defense authorities in Panama say more than 2,500 homes have been damaged and 10 people killed in more than a week of flooding caused by heavy rains. The rains are continuing, and have washed out the access road to one of the bridges crossing over the Panama canal.
13th: Bone-chilling cold swept across the snow-hit Great Plains and Midwest on Monday, closing schools and playing havoc with travel plans, with the sub-freezing temperatures reaching as far south as Florida. Minnesota and Wisconsin shivered in temperatures not expected to top single digits (degF) -- with wind-chills much colder than that -- and motorists spent hours awaiting rescue on impassable roads in northwest Indiana. Air traffic was gradually returning to a semblance of normal after hundreds of flights were canceled at airports in Midwestern and East Coast hubs during the worst of a snow storm on Sunday. Another 75 flights were canceled at O'Hare International Airport on Monday, but delays were called minor. There were winter storm warnings posted for parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, western Pennsylvania, western New York and Vermont, forecasters said. Lake-effect snows -- generated when cold air whips up storm clouds off the warmer Great Lakes -- continued to plague northwest Indiana, northern Ohio, and western New York. A torrential weekend rain storm triggered river flooding and mudslides in the U.S. Northwest, shutting down Amtrak passenger rail service between Seattle and Portland, Oregon. According to the Minnesota State Climatology Office, this was the largest December snow storm for the area on record, the largest since 1991, and the fifth largest since records began in 1891. The snow proved to be too much for the Minneapolis Metrodome's inflatable roof; it collapsed under the heavy weight of the frozen precipitation on the 12th. Eau Claire, Wisconsin recieved 22.0 inches of snow on the 11th, its highest single calendar day snowfall total in history.
14th: Canadian military aircraft helped to rescue hundreds of motorists stranded by an unusually fierce winter storm that closed a key transport link in southwestern Ontario. By Tuesday afternoon, police had reached most of the more than 300 people who were stranded, some overnight on Monday, in cars and trucks on Highway 402 near Sarnia, Ontario. The storm had been too severe for snowplow crews to keep the road open. A local state of emergency was declared in the area about 70 miles northeast of Detroit, Michigan.
15th: Sorvaag, Faeroe Islands, has clocked winds to 135 km/h with 150 km/h gusts on nearby hills. This has happened amidst blinding snow squalls in the freezing-cold wake of a powerful cold front. The temperature on Wednesday climbed to 9 C, but it has since dived to -5 C with a wind chill below -15 C. Conditions are less extreme on Shetland and Orkney, yet still harsh with freezing gales and bursts of snow.
17th: Heavy snow and freezing temperatures caused travel chaos across northern Europe on Friday, with hundreds of German flights canceled and icy roads wreaking havoc in Poland and the Netherlands ahead of Christmas. A spokesman for Frankfurt airport operator Fraport said 400 of 1,400 scheduled flights had been canceled at continental Europe's busiest airport, even though Germany's financial capital escaped the worst of the winter weather. Another 100 flights were canceled in Berlin, which was blanketed in heavy snow throughout the day, leaving city workers scrambling to clear roads and slowing traffic to a crawl in some parts. In neighboring Poland, where severe frost has killed 93 people so far this winter, a blast of cold and new train timetables combined to cause chaos on the rail network. In the Netherlands, highways became covered in ice, two tunnels were closed due to ice and an accident, and 500km of traffic jams formed. Amsterdam Schiphol Airport said dozens of flights had been canceled and public transport in Dutch cities was sharply reduced. Motorists were warned to take great care on icy roads and police in Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland told drivers to avoid non-essential travel.
18th: Italy's island of Capri recorded its first snowfall in 25 years.
17th-22nd: More storms inundated California with rain, snow, and high winds on December 17th-22nd. Los Angeles International Airport, among several other locations, broke its daily precipitation record on both the 19th (2.23 inches, surpassing the old record of 1.62 inches set in 1984) and the 20th (0.98 inches, surpassing the previous record of 0.7 inches set in 1952). In addition to breaking its daily precipitation record of 2.80 inches (71 mm) on the 19th, besting the old record of 2.12 inches set in 1921, downtown Los Angeles recorded a total of 6.72 inches (of rain during from the 17th through 4:45 AM PST on the 22nd, equivalent to more than one-third of its annual average precipitation. More than 21 inches of rain was reported at Tanbark in Los Angeles County and many surrounding areas had more than 12 inches of rain. As of December 20th, up to 4m of snow was reported at Mammoth Mountain ski resort, becoming the snowiest December on record at the resort since 1969. Nearly 21,000 cutomers lost power in Southern California on the 20th.
20th: Snow that forecasters say could reach "epic proportions" is blanketing parts of western Colorado, leaving some cars along Interstate 70 stranded. The snow isn't expected to make it to the east side of the Rockies, but winds of up 80 mph are battering the Colorado Springs area. Property owners tell The Gazette that windows of several vehicles have been broken by flying rocks. Gusts toppled a tractor-trailer on Interstate 25. The National Weather Service says the central Colorado mountains could get up to a foot of snow by Tuesday and the top of the Grand Mesa and areas around Crested Butte above 9,000 feet could have 6 to 8 feet of snow by Thursday. Eastbound I-70 in Vail closed because of vehicles stuck in the snow, but was reopened Monday afternoon.
21st: Snow and freezing temperatures continued to ground flights to and from Britain, with travelers hoping to get away for Christmas likely to suffer delays and cancellations for several more days. British Airways said it expects to make a "significant number of cancellations" to its short-haul services from London's Heathrow airport, which will again operate with just one of its two runways on Tuesday. "Severe weather continues to cause significant disruption to our operation and will do so in the run up to Christmas," the airline said in a statement on Tuesday. "Currently Heathrow has only one of its two runways operational and many areas of the airfield remain unusable, including areas around parked aircraft." Thousands of passengers have been stranded at Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, for days as flights have been delayed and canceled. Eurocontrol, the umbrella group for air-traffic control across 38 countries, said more than 22,000 flights across Europe were cancelled on Monday but that more services would likely operate on Tuesday. London's Gatwick Airport re-opened at 0600 GMT after closing overnight.
23rd: Californian resorts and cities evacuated hundreds of people as a new storm brought more misery after days of flooding, thunderstorms and tidal surges. The latest violent storm to hit the region left residential mountainous areas under mud while authorities scrambled to save lives at risk. Some public transportation and even funeral services were suspended due to flooding fears. Around 400 people and 20 stores were evacuated in coastal San Juan Capistrano, between Los Angeles and San Diego, after a hillside collapsed nears a dozen houses.
23rd: Queenslanders and visitors to the state are being warned to prepare for heavy rain and flooding during the holiday period. The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting hundreds more millimetres of rain to fall along much of the already saturated areas of the state before the end of the year. The Bureau of Meteorology's Queensland Regional Director, Jim Davidson, said that many river catchments have become so thoroughly soaked that any further rain is likely to spill very quickly into rivers and streams. Mr Davidson said that our current expectations are for rainfalls in the range 300 to 600mm across eastern and northern Queensland over the next week, with the bulk of the rain falling over eastern tropical districts north of Rockhampton. Higher falls are possible but these are expected to be isolated. Areas receiving the heaviest falls will vary over the coming week, being dependent on the movement of the monsoon trough and other weather systems.
25th-27th: Blizzards left tens of thousands of air passengers stranded and many people without power in NE USA. Many passengers were expected to be stranded until the end of the week after some 7,000 flights were cancelled over the busy holiday travel period. hree airports serving New York - JFK, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International Airport - and also Boston's Logan and Philadelphia International reopened on Monday evening. Tens of thousands of homes were left without power. The New York Times quoted utility companies as saying homes in Massachusetts, New York City and Westchester County, Long Island and New Jersey had no supply. Five deaths were reported in road accidents in the storm, four in the Carolinas and one in Maine. National rail operator Amtrak - which earlier shut its New York-Boston route - announced a limited resumption of services. Six US states - Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia - earlier all declared emergencies. The New York area received up to 50cm of snow over two days. A subway train in New York City was trapped for seven hours before passengers were rescued. The southern states of Georgia and South Carolina had their first white Christmas in more than a century. But Washington DC escaped the blizzard, with only a dusting of snow.
27th: -48.3C was recorded at Pale di San Martino, this morning, the lowest temperature evere recorded in Italy.
28th: The storm system that battered America's north-eastern states in recent days has moved north into Canada, causing widespread power outages and dangerous conditions. Almost 40,000 homes in Nova Scotia lost power in the height of the storm as fierce wind gusts and blizzard conditions descended on the region. It is the fourth major storm to hit Atlantic Canada in as many weeks. Last week, New Brunswick province suffered millions of dollars in storm damage to houses, beaches and tourist attractions. On Monday, New Brunswick again experienced heavy snow and some areas of zero visibility, with wind gusts of up to 100km per hour (62 mph). About 16,000 households lost power. Dozens of flights to and from Canada have been cancelled or delayed, particularly in Toronto and Montreal.
31st: The western United States is bearing the brunt of new winter storms, with heavy snow blanketing an area from New Mexico to Minnesota. Snow and ice have closed a number of major roads, with Arizona and New Mexico particularly badly hit. Denver, Colorado, had its heaviest snowfall of the season. Wild weather is also hitting southern states - three people are reported dead after an unseasonal tornado struck Arkansas. Ice and snow forced the temporary closure of Interstates 40 and 17 in northern Arizona, with a traffic hotline in the state taking more than a million calls on Thursday. Phoenix was braced for rare freezing temperatures. Residents are astonished by the sight of snow flurries in the usually temperate southwestern capital. Wyoming, Montana and Nevada suffered serious road closures, while a sudden blizzard combined with winds of up to 65mph (105km/h) caused havoc in southern New Mexico. The eastern seaboard is just recovering from a winter storm that paralysed transport, bringing an apology from New York's mayor over clean-up efforts. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitted the city's response to the recent blizzard was "inadequate and unacceptable". At one point, 600 city buses became stuck in the snow, blocking streets, but they had all been cleared by Thursday. New York's three airports were back to operating on regular schedules, but airlines warned that it would be some time before the backlog of stranded passengers has cleared.

World weather news, November 2010

3rd: Flooding has caused chaos in parts of southern Thailand and north Malaysia, making some areas inaccessible. In the Thai city of Hat Yai cars were submerged, power supplies were interrupted and transport links cut. In northern Malaysia, 28,000 people have been displaced and an airport closed because of a flooded runway. The flooding follows days of heavy rain in the region. More than 100 people were killed by floods in northern Thailand in October.
3rd-4th: Many records fell in southern California and in some places temperatures were the warmest for so late in the season and even some all time November records fell. Its been another very hot day today (the 4th) and more records are falling as well. Thursday at least hit 100F at San Diego International Airport and that is a record for the day, the hottest temperature ever in November and the hottest for so late in the season by a good two weeks.
4th: Strengthening Tropical Storm Tomas drenched Haiti on Thursday, threatening fragile, crowded earthquake survivors' camps in the poor Caribbean country that is also reeling from a deadly cholera epidemic. Tomas was expected to pass close to Haiti overnight, endangering the largely deforested land with gusting winds, surging waves and torrential rains of up to 10 or 15 inches in some areas.
4th: A landslide caused by heavy rain killed 20 people in Costa Rica on Thursday as President Laura Chinchilla considered declaring a national emergency to help the coffee-growing nation deal with widespread flooding. The National Emergency Commission said 15 people remained missing after rains overnight loosened a swathe of Cerro Pico Blanco, a mountain popular with hikers and rock climbers, causing the mudslide that buried poorly constructed houses. Over 1,300 people in the capital and along Costa Rica's Pacific coast were moved to shelters to flee the flooding prompted by rains pelting the country this week.
8th-12th: Two deep areas of low pressure affected the British Isles this week, the first bringing the lowest November MSL pressure to Heathrow Airport since its records began in 1949. See my British Isles diary for maps showing the minimum pressure recorded. Rain from ther first system caused flooding in Emsworth in Hampshire. Homes were also flooded on the Isle of Wight, roads were closed and two schools were forced to shut. The second system brought a lot of damage and disruption duee to the wind. A woman who was impaled on a branch when a falling tree hit her car has died, as the UK faces more disruption after 24 hours of severe weather. Police said the woman's car crashed on the outskirts of Wakefield in West Yorkshire on Thursday evening. Gale-force winds and torrential rain have caused damage, with power lines brought down and bridges closed. The worst hit areas have been northern England, north Wales and Northern Ireland, with gusts of 80mph. Some 6,000 people in Northern Ireland were left without power on Thursday night. At Leeds-Bradford airport, one flight from Dublin was forced to divert to Liverpool after making three unsuccessful attempts to land. Other planes were forced to fly on to Manchester. All ferry sailings across the Irish Sea were cancelled for a time. There was some localised flooding in Scotland.
10th-11th: Sri Lanka sent in troops to rescue residents marooned in the capital Colombo on Thursday after the heaviest rains in 18 years flooded the city, forcing up to 300,000 people from their homes. At least one man was struck down by lightning and killed while a woman was injured when her house collapsed. Overnight rains dumped 44.5cm of rain on the city, the biggest deluge since June 1992, when 49.7cm fell in a day.
13th: A rare early season winter storm across the U.S. states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin brought 20 cm to 30 cm of snow on November 13th, just three days after the region experienced record breaking warm temperatures. The storm contributed to Duluth, Minnesota having its sixth snowiest autumn on record. A low pressure system moving through the central Plains strengthened as it moved through the region. The storm is one of the most significant snowstorms to impact the city of Minneapolis before Thanksgiving in two decades. Nearly 115,000 people were reported to have lost power during the storm, and over 200 car accidents were reported. Two deaths from a car accident in Wisconsin are being blamed on the snow storm.
14th: On November 14th, a storm brought flooding to northern France and Belgium, leaving three people dead. Officials described the flooding as the worst in 50 years. The national weather service said that in two days Belgium received as much rainfall as it normally gets in a month. In Granville, France, 48.4mm of rain fell in 24 hours. Storms that affected the region just a week earlier killed one and left another missing in northern France.
15th: Record warm temperatures across western Russia during November affected animals in the region. Temperatures in Moscow reached 12.3C on November 15th - 11.2C above average. Russian meteorologists report that during the first half of November, temperatures in western parts of country hovered around 10C above normal and temperatures in Moscow have broken daily records on five separate days. Temperatures in western Siberia have also been extremely warm, with the temperature in Novosibirsk reaching 3.7C, marking the warmest November temperature ever recorded there. The warm temperatures have caused problems for wildlife, according to ecologists. Hedgehogs and badgers have been unable to go into hibernation, while some species of red squirrel and hares have not transitioned into their warm winter coats. This will negatively impact the animals when temperatures return to normal.
17th: Heavy rain and gales sparked floods and landslides in southwest England, disrupting travel and trapping people in their homes. Police said they are dealing with a "major incident," with flooding in several areas of the coastal county of Cornwall. Devon and Cornwall Police said parts of the towns of St. Austell and St. Blazey were impassable, and people had been trapped in cars and houses. The Maritime and Coastguard agency said two search-and-rescue helicopters had been scrambled to help people trapped in cars, and more emergency workers were on standby amid reports of water 1.5m deep in places. There were no immediate reports of injuries. All rail services to Cornwall were suspended after a landslide blocked the line.
23rd: The weather has been unseasonably warm in Chicago over the last few days with temperatures hitting 20C on Monday afternoon. A record of 21C was set for November in 1918, while the average temperature for Chicago at this time of year is 7C. During Monday afternoon and evening, an active cold front passed from the west and interacted with the warm air, triggering a line of heavy rain, thunderstorms, strong winds and tornadoes. A tornado spanning 800 metres caused damage in the town of Caledonia, Illinois while hail up to 5cm wide fell in west and northwest Illinois. Several children were injured after the tornado caused a bus to roll. Grain silos, barns and other buildings were also damaged. Power lines were knocked down, cutting electricity to around nine thousand homes and affecting four thousand homes in Chicago.
23rd: Heavy rain and flash floods has caused damage to homes in central parts of Queensland, on Australia's eastern seaboard. More than 200mm fell at the weekend in the Yeppoon area north of Rockhampton. Homes were flooded as water streamed off the hillsides. Further south, Gladstone had its average monthly rainfall of 58mm in just 2 days, contributing to what may be the town's wettest November on record. The Australian Weather Bureau says several towns have broken their November rainfall records. Proserpine had 438mm, breaking its record of 27 years, while further north, Ayr measured 218mm. The heavy rains continued to cause damage in Queensland on Monday with further tropical-like downpours equivalent to a months worth of rainfall in just 10 minutes. With more storms forecast over the next few days, more November rainfall records are likely to be broken.
24th: Some of the coldest air to blast through the USA during the month of November is on the move and will make for a frigid Thanksgiving from California to Texas, Colorado and the Great Lakes. The bitter, Arctic air already invaded the Northwest over the past few days, sending temperatures plummeting to record daily lows in Seattle and many cities across Montana. Some outstanding new records that have been set include high temperatures of -10F in Cut Bank, Mont., and -8F in Lewistown, Mont., Tuesday. Punishing winds have made it feel even more frigid. In Seattle, temperatures dipped into the teens Tuesday morning and again Tuesday night. It is not that often that Seattle gets this cold, especially in November. In fact, there were only two other times in the last 20 years that temperatures dropped into the teens in Seattle during November. Thanksgiving Day will be the coldest day of the season so far for a host of cities across the middle of the country, including Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Denver.
24th: The 2010 Atlantic storm season was twice as active as normal but what really amazed forecasters was that a record 12 hurricanes formed but never made landfall in the United States. The hurricanes and 19 named tropical storms over the Americas and the Caribbean during the June 1-November 30 season did contribute to some of the worst flooding in decades in Central and Southern America.
24th: Unusual for November is the rainfall that has wet the Deccan, the West Coast and, most of all, the heart of northwestern India. Take the state of Gujarat, where normal rainfall for the month is mostly between 1 mm and 10 mm. At Bhuj, where normal monthly rainfall is about 2 mm, rainfall (286mm so far this month) as a percent of normal to date has been above 18,000 percent. Among the sites having rainfall above 2,000 percent of normal (to date) are Rajkot and, in neighboring Rajasthan, Jaipur. At Jaipur: a rainfall of 49mm was observed within 24 hours here (as of Wednesday, Nov 24). Normal November rainfall is 3mm.
24th: Concentrations of the main greenhouse gases have reached their highest levels recorded since pre-industrial times, according to the World Meteorological Organization's 2009 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The report also highlights concerns that global warming may lead to even greater emissions of methane from Arctic areas. According to the Bulletin, total radiative forcing of all long-lived greenhouse gases increased by 27.5 per cent from 1990 to 2009 and by 1.0 per cent from 2008 to 2009, reflecting the rising atmospheric burdens of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide,
26th: Heavy rainfall over the last two days has pushed Melbourne's rainfall to 649mm, which is above the long-term average of 647.7mm. This years rainfall ends the longest run of below average years in Melbourne's history - a 13 year stretch from 1997 to 2009, Prior to the "long dry" the previous record run of dry years was six set from 1979 to 1984. November rainfall has also pushed the Victorian 2010 rainfall total to 701mm well ahead of the long-term average of 660mm. The impact of this rainfall is clearly seen in the state of Victoria's water storages which have risen from an average of 31% of total capacity to 63% over the last year. It is likely that 2010 will be Victoria's wettest year since 1992 (850mm) but fall well short of the record set in 1973 (925mm). The excellent rainfall in 2010 has been due to a strong La Ni�a in the Pacific Ocean which has seen a sequence of major rainfall events draw down tropical moisture from north of Australia.
30th: Almost a week of heavy rain in northern Greece has caused flooding and landslides, damaging homes and isolating villages. At least two villages were cut off, after roads and electricity pylons were swept away by flood waters. There are fears that the city of Ioannina, near the Pindus Mountains in northwest Greece, could also be threatened by landslides. Heavy rain is forecast to continue throughout the rest of this week. The unusually southerly position of the jet stream may have contributed to the very wet weather in this part of Europe.
30th: Heavy snow has hit northern Spain and Portugal while rains and winds have battered normally sunny resort areas. Spain's meteorological agency said 35 of Spain's 51 provinces were on snow alert on Tuesday. Badly hit was the northwestern region of Galicia, where several roads were cut off and schools forced to cancel classes. Heavy snow also fell in neighboring regions of northeastern Portugal, closing roads and schools. Torrential rains and gales have lashed much of Spain over the past two days, affecting normally sunny tourist destinations such as Tenerife in the Canary Islands and Malaga in southern Spain.

World weather news, October 2010

1st: Tropical storm Nicole lashed the eastern United States with heavy rain and high winds, causing more flooding and leaving one Pennsylvania woman dead in a weather-related traffic accident. The woman drove her car into a rain-swollen creek, bringing the U.S. death toll from the storm to at least six, after five people were killed earlier this week in North Carolina. Flood warnings were in effect for parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. The deluge that started on Wednesday set records in several areas. The highest total was in Newport, North Carolina, with a multi-day total of 19 to 21.5 inches of rain.
5th: An early winter storm that chased record heat out of northern Nevada has swamped Reno with record-setting rain and dropped enough snow at the top of the Sierra to close a mountain highway pass near Lake Tahoe. A series of thunderstorms also rumbled through Arizona, bringing high winds and heavy rains that downed power lines and damaged homes in the Phoenix area. The storms also flooded freeways and underpasses and disrupted air travel at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. In Nevada, the National Weather Service extended a winter weather advisory through late Tuesday afternoon for Reno, Tahoe and Carson City. Temperatures were in the upper 40s in Reno at midday Tuesday after setting record highs in the mid-90s a week ago. Snow forced the closure of California Highway 89 at Monitor Pass south of Tahoe on Tuesday. In the Phoenix area, a microburst downed 19 power poles, at least three of which landed on homes. The storms also flooded roads and dropped half-inch-size hail in parts of Phoenix. The Arizona Department of Transportation said flooding caused major backups on Interstate 10 and U.S. 60.
5th: Heavy rain unleashed flash floods and mudslides, killing at least 56 people in a remote corner of Indonesia that rescuers were struggling to reach.
6th: A rare swarm of tornadoes shoved semis off highways and destroyed homes in the pre-dawn darkness, leaving startled residents wondering if they were in Arizona anymore or had woken up in the twister-prone Midwest. Sparsely populated Arizona typically has four tornadoes a year, but rarely if ever sees twisters come in clusters and cause the kind of damage seen today.
6th: Bangladesh has experienced its driest monsoon season for more than a decade despite heavy rains in neighbouring India and Pakistan that caused flooding. Bangladesh received 139.5cm of rain this monsoon, which runs from June to September, nearly 20 percent less than predicted by the meteorological office and the lowest rainfall since 1994.
7th: Asia's death toll from vicious rains rose to nearly 140 as disaster officials reached previously isolated areas in Vietnam, while the worst flooding in parts of southern China in nearly a half-century killed one person and forced 213,000 villagers to evacuate. In Vietnam, the death toll nearly doubled to 48 after disaster officials were finally able to access areas that had been cut off by high waters. Another 23 people remained missing as villagers started returning to areas where the water was receding. Meanwhile, the worst flooding to strike parts of southern China in nearly half a century left one person dead and three missing and forced 213,000 people from their homes, the country's state media reported. Heavy rains lashed the island province of Hainan, forcing 550 villages to flee, leaving thousands homeless with streets inundated and roads damaged.
10th-11th: Parts of Queensland have been flooded after extreme thunderstorms at the weekend. Thunderstorms unleashed downpours across the state with rainfall totals reaching 250mm in parts of the Gold Coast area from Sunday to Monday. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, about 150mm of rain had drenched the state capital Brisbane by Monday afternoon, giving rise to flash flooding which inundated homes and businesses. Brisbane police said several drivers had to be rescued from stranded vehicles, and many roads around the city were closed due to the flooding. Strong winds associated with the storms also brought down trees and cut the power to more than 20,000 homes.
11th: Moderate to strong La Ni�a conditions are now well established in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and are likely to continue at least until the first quarter of next year, according to WMO's new El Ni�o/La Ni�a Update. "Almost all forecast models predict continuation and possible further strengthening of this La Ni�a episode for the next 4-6 months or more, taking the event well into the first quarter of 2011," says the Update. The current La Ni�a developed quickly in June and July 2010, following the dissipation of the 2009/2010 El Ni�o in April. Since August the event has been moderate to strong.
11th: More than 440,000 people have been evacuated in Hainan after the heaviest rains for decades inundated 90 percent of the Chinese island in the South China Sea. Further downpours were forecast for Wednesday, threatening to intensify damage to homes, infrastructure and crops across the island. The floods have affected 2.7 million people in 16 cities and forced schools to close.
12th: A road crash south of the Polish capital, Warsaw, has left 18 people dead. The accident occurred at dawn in thick fog when a lorry and a minibus collided near the town of Nowe Miasto nad Pilica, 80km from Warsaw. Sixteen people were confirmed dead at the scene and two others who were treated for their injuries in hospital later died. All those killed, 14 men and four women, were travelling on the minibus.
13th: International lenders are estimating that this summer's floods caused $9.5 billion in damage to Pakistan's infrastructure, agriculture and other sectors, a government official said. The estimate, drafted by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank in consultation with Pakistani leaders, underscores the financial challenges facing Pakistan, which was relying on international loans before the deluge.
13th: Tsunamis leave a destructive and often deadly stamp on land, but they also make a surprising and poorly understood impression high above the Earth. Now scientists are turning their gaze upward in the hunt for signs of these as-yet mysterious "atmospheric gravity waves" generated by tsunamis, in an effort to gather better data on the potentially devastating ocean-based waves and improve tsunami warning networks. They're using a familiar and ubiquitous tool - GPS - to do it. "The tsunami very effectively generates atmospheric gravity waves, and because they're fast, those waves can effectively travel to the upper atmosphere," said Michael Hickey, a physics professor and associate dean at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. Hickey, who works on computer modeling, has teamed up with researchers who are using GPS to observe these tsunami-generated atmospheric waves in the ionosphere, which lies between 80 and 500km above the Earth.
14th: Hurricane Paula dumped rain on Cuba's western tobacco-growing province as the small hurricane hugged the island's northern coast, but it was expected to weaken as it moved eastward toward the Cuban capital Havana. Cuba's government replaced hurricane warnings for the western province of Pinar del Rio with a tropical storm warning, suggesting it did not expect a major impact from the Category 1 hurricane, the lowest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
14th-18th: Torrential rains poured over north central Vietnam. Up to 968 mm of rain fell in Nghe An, up to 938 mm in Ha Tinh, and up to 787 mm in Quang Binh. At least 32 people were killed and more than 150,000 homes were flooded.
17th: More than 100,000 people have been evacuated after rains hammered the Chinese island of Hainan causing major floods for the second time this month. Around 200 village have been inundated after 200mm of rain lashed the island between Friday and Sunday.
17th: The northern Philippines was lashed by heavy rains and strong winds from super typhoon Megi on Monday morning, and forecasters said the center of the storm was expected to make landfall before noon. Megi, the 10th and strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, had slowed and changed course slightly overnight to be tracking west southwest, delaying its expected arrival in north Luzon, the country's main island. At 2200GMT Sunday, the typhoon was 190 km east of Cagayan, and moving west southwest at 19 km/h. Landslides blocking roads were reported in Apayao province. Megi was a category 5 super typhoon, the highest rating, with winds of more than 250 kph (155 mph) and would retain that strength as it crossed north Luzon on Monday. Megi was among the most intense tropical cyclones in recorded history, with a low pressure of 885mb. The strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded was Typhoon Tip in 1979 - also in the Western North Pacific - which produced a minimum pressure of 870mb.
18th-19th: Greek authorities have declared a state of emergency on the Aegean Sea islands of Ikaria and Chios after flash floods left two people dead. The fire service said a 34-year-old man was found dead on Ikaria on Tuesday in the ruins of his secluded house, which was demolished by flood waters after heavy rains. It also said an elderly motorist drowned when a stream carried off his car on Chios, north of Ikaria on Monday. Another ten people were trapped in their cars and had to be rescue. Authorities received 450 calls from owners of flooded homes and businesses.
18th: Steady rains toppled hillsides and turned streets into rivers in the Haitian capital over the weekend, leaving at least 12 people dead and three missing. Storms falling on the mountains that ring the capital sent cascades into the pitch-black downtown, where trucks left boat-like wakes as they forded boulevards.
19th: The worst floods in decades in Thailand's rural northeast have killed at least seven people and damaged homes, businesses and swathes of farmland. In worst-hit Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand's biggest province, three people died and thousands of homes were flooded along with a hospital, which has been forced to evacuate patients in critical condition.
21st: Torrential rains in Taiwan left 20 Chinese nationals unaccounted for after their buses were trapped along a badly damaged highway. About 400 people in 32 vehicles were stuck along the damaged road in northeastern Ilan county but there were no reports of injuries. Taiwan's weather bureau issued a warning about Typhoon Megi on Thursday as torrential rain caused landslides and interrupted railway traffic.
21st: Torrential rains have killed at least two people on a southern Japanese island and left one missing, with the weather agency warning of possible mudslides and more rain to come. The heavy rains - part of the knock-on effect of super Typhoon Megi - have battered the subtropical island chain of Amami since Monday night, leaving two women dead at a nursing home. Landslides destroyed houses on the main Amami-oshima island, some 1,300 kilometres southwest of Tokyo. The Japan Meteorological Agency said 647 millimetres of rain fell in the city of Amami over 24 hours, adding mudslides and flooding were now a danger.
22nd: Thousands of people have been displaced in Burma following a powerful cyclone. Cyclone Giri hit western Rakhine state packing winds of up to 110mph, with the major town of Kayaukpyu hard hit. There are unconfirmed reports of dozens of villagers and fisherman missing. Communications have also been hit, with power lines and telephone poles badly damaged, reports say.
24th: In October 2010, Brazil's north and west Amazonia was in the midst of one of its worst droughts in the past 40 years. In the jungle city of Manaus, the Rio Negro (Black river) - one of the most important tributaries of the Rio Amazonia (Amazon river) - fell to its lowest level of 13.6 metres since record keeping began in 1902. Maunas is where the Rio Negro is at its deepest and where it merges with the Amazon River. Local authorities reported that nearly half of Amazonia's 62 municipalities declared a state of emergency. More than 60,000 families were affected by the drought conditions.
26th: The first -30C reading was registered at Oimakon on the 20th. Since then, another six days have had lows below -30C. Lowest of these was the -38.2C reading reached early today. Daily mean temperatures for the week ended today have been between 7.7C and 11.1C below normal. The fact is that this settlement, together with Verkhoyansk, holds claim to coldest permanent habitation on Earth. Lowest readings here are about -68C. In October, the month begins with a normal mean daily temperature of -7.2C. It ends with a normal mean of -26.1C. That is nearly 2/3 of a degree C drop in normal temperature from one day to the next. But, such marked contrast in climate between the first and last of the month is necessary, given that normal daily temperature ranges from about 13.5C at the height of summer (July) and -50.0C at the depths of winter (January). Even in the Pole of Cold, hot weather is not unusual during the short Northern summer. But, in this last July, a late-month heat wave brought Oimakon its all-time high of 34.6C on the 28th. Highs were 33.8C on the 27th and 33.0C on the 29th.
26th: New low pressure records for the continental USA were established during the passage of a major cyclonic storm on 26 October 2010. At Bigfork, Minnesota (47.75�N, 93.65�W) the MSL pressure fell to 954.9mb - a value more typical of deep Atlantic and Pacific systems than the middle of the US continental land mass. The Bigfork value is confirmed by the readings of 955.6mb at Orr and 956.0mb at International Falls: the previous lowest pressure record at International Falls was 971.9mb, almost 16mb higher, which occurred on 11 November 1949. The previous state record for Minnesota was 963mb at Albert Lea and Austin on 10 November 1998. The Bigfork value breaks not only the previous 'USA-interior-of-the-continent-record' (958mb at Cleveland, Ohio during the Great Ohio Storm of 26 January 1978), but also the lowest pressure recorded anywhere in the continental United States aside from Alaska and the Atlantic Coast. The lowest non-hurricane barometric pressure reading anywhere in the United States was 927mb at Dutch Harbor, Alaska on 25 October 1977: the lowest hurricane pressure reading was 892 mbar recorded in 1935 during the Great Labor Day Hurricane. NOAA's Storm Prediction Centre logged 24 tornado reports and 282 reports of damaging high winds from the spectacular storm, with tornado watches posted for Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, a blizzard warning for North Dakota, high wind warnings for most of the upper Midwest, and near-hurricane force winds on Lake Superior. This depression will go down as one Of the most intense systems to ever influence Southern Manitoba. Winnipeg set an all time record for lowest barometric pressure with this storm as the pressure dropped to 967,0mb this afternoon. This shattered the previous lowest pressure recorded in Winnipeg of 974.2mb.
28th: People from the Dakotas to North Carolina (USA) were dealing with the aftermath of a massive storm that roared across the country, unleashing dozens of tornadoes, rain, flooding and eventually snow to some places, leaving behind plenty of destruction and one death in Michigan. Heavy snow and strong winds battered the Dakotas for a second day Wednesday, with visibility reduced by blowing snow and roadways covered by ice, snow and slush. Eight tornadoes touched down in Indiana, three in Kentucky, and six in Ohio, including one with gusts of at least 111 mph that ripped through a village in the northwest part of the state, destroying several homes. Tornadoes were confirmed or suspected as far east as Virginia and power was out for a time to countless customers.
30th: A huge storm has ravaged the Caribbean paradise of Saint Lucia killing at least 14 people, wiping out the banana crop and causing millions of dollars in damage. Tomas, which struck Saint Lucia as a category one hurricane packing winds of 150 km/h, then weakened to a tropical storm.

World weather news, September 2010

1st: Hurricane Earl intensified in the Atlantic to become a category four hurricane again Wednesday as sustained winds rose to 135mph, the National Hurricane Center said. With Earl spinning closer to the US mainland, authorities announced a variety of warnings and watches from North Carolina to Massachusetts.
2nd: Typhoon Kompasu struck the South Korean capital, downing power lines and causing transport chaos. At least three people were killed and dozens more injured in the storm - the strongest to hit Seoul in 15 years. More than 120 flights were cancelled and power cuts hit major parts of the subway network. Further south, Tropical Storm Lionrock made landfall in the Chinese province of Fujian, bringing strong winds and torrential rain.
3rd: The Amazon river has dropped to its lowest level in 40 years in north-eastern Peru, causing severe economic disruption in a region where it is the main transport route. At least six large boats have been stranded near the port city of Iquitos. The low water level is the result of a prolonged spell of dry weather, Peru's national meteorological office said.
4th: Earl lost its tropical storm status over Canada, US government forecasters announced, but the storm still left one person dead and nearly one million people without power in northeastern Canada. The storm also menaced the US East Coast but left it largely undamaged. The centre of the storm made landfall in southern Nova Scotia shortly after 1400GMT on Saturday, but the Canadian Hurricane Centre (CHC) later said its strength steadily fell as it buffeted the craggy coastline. Although weakened, Earl still pounded Halifax, the region's largest city, with high winds and rain. By late afternoon, one man was killed after falling off his boat in Nova Scotia and some 210,000 homes and 940,000 people in the region were without power. Greater Moncton International Airport canceled all flights Saturday, and Halifax Stanfield International Airport was under partial operation. Earlier this week, Earl lashed several hundred kilometres of the US East Coast seaboard with heavy rains and strong winds, disrupting holiday plans for millions and prompting evacuations in North Carolina. It had also prompted hurricane warnings in the northeastern US state of Massachusetts, notably its vacation destinations including Cape Cod and the tiny islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Weather watchers said Earl was still the most powerful storm to threaten the US Northeast since 1991, when Hurricane Bob killed six people.
5th: Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a "national tragedy" on Sunday after landslides killed at least 37 people and left rescuers digging in the mud for nearly two dozen still missing. "This weekend alone we have seen damage comparable to what we experienced with Agatha," he said, referring to a tropical storm in May that killed 165 Guatemalans and left thousands homeless. Officials said 40,000 people had lost their homes and another 11,686 had been evacuated. Central America has been lashed by an unusually fierce rainy season this year. The recent bad weather has killed 55 people in Honduras, at least 40 in Nicaragua, nine in El Salvador and three in Costa Rica.
7th: Rising flood waters threatened hundreds of Australian homes after scores were inundated by weekend storms which caused millions of dollars of damage, officials said. Water police and emergency helicopters were on standby to rescue stranded residents in the southeastern state of Victoria, and the government announced the formation of a special advisory body to help direct recovery efforts. Residents in Wangaratta, in the state's northeast, sandbagged homes in fears that a levee would burst, while officials worried that 500 properties downstream in Shepparton could be cut off by rising waters.
8th: Floods that have affected almost one million people in the south and east of Mexico will likely worsen after the opening of a dam and predictions of more rain, a state governor said. "Heavy rains are predicted, not only in Tabasco (state) but also in the whole south-southeastern region, including storms and hurricanes... which would put us in a more critical situation," Tabasco governor Andres Granier said. The opening of the region's Penitas dam could release up to 2,000 cubic meters of water per second to the Carrizal and Samaria rivers, which were already at critical levels. The states of Veracruz, Oaxaca and Tabasco were the worst hit in the floods that swept through entire towns and affected more than 900,000 people in some way. The total toll from the heaviest rains in living memory in Guatemala and Mexico rose above 50 on Tuesday, including seven in Mexico.
8th: At least three people were still missing, and four were killed, after flooding caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine swept vehicles from Texas roads and overpowered swimmers in the Guadalupe River. Hermine caused relatively few problems when it made landfall as a tropical storm Monday night, and as the remnants moved north into Texas and Oklahoma, the flooding caught some people off guard. The sudden flooding in Texas on Wednesday led to more than 100 high-water rescues. Some of the Texas' most intense flooding occurred in low-lying pockets of Arlington, a suburb 22 miles west of Dallas. More than 1,200 people in the town of Holland, about 45 miles northeast of Austin, were without water because of storm damage. The storm also spawned several tornadoes near Dallas and in southern Oklahoma. The strongest was one that touched down just southwest of Dallas Love Field near the Trinity River with estimated three-second gusts of 110 to 137 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Hermine was the third tropical system this year to hit the Rio Grande Valley, a flood-prone area that encompasses northeastern Mexico and southeastern Texas.
12th: Hurricane Julia, which formed on the 12th, never made landfall, but did receive the distinction of becoming the easternmost Category 4 hurricane on record in the North Atlantic.
14th: Media in Pakistan are reporting that high waters are still threatening further inundation in Sindh, many days after the Indus River flood crest emptied into the Arabian Sea.
16th: A macroburst - a sudden intense storm that produces straight-line winds - tore through New York City, according to the National Weather Service. The macroburst had winds that reached 125 mph, stretched for eight miles and was up to five miles wide. Two tornadoes - one in Brooklyn with winds up to 80 mph and one in Queens with winds hitting 100 mph - touched down in the city in the midst of the severe weather outbreak. This brought the total number of tornadoes in New York City this year to three, including one this past July. Prior to 2010, only seven tornadoes had been recorded in the city since 1950. The National Weather Service said that the macroburst was more destructive than the tornadoes. One person was killed, tens of thousands were left without power, an estimated 3,000 trees were uprooted, and rail services were delayed.
16th-17th: Heavy snow and ice wreaked havoc in parts of Australia's southern state of Tasmania during a dangerous and unusual (austral) spring snowsorm. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Tasmania's capital city of Hobart recorded its coldest September day in 25 years. The maximum temperature for the day reached 8.5C, which was 6.7C below the September average. Wind gusts of 88 mph were recorded at Cape Bruny. More than 12,000 residents lost power. The storm also generated enormous waves off the coast, including an 18.4 metre wave off Cape Sorrell, a possible Tasmanian and Australia record. The storm - described as 'the size of Australia' - made its way across the Tasman Sea toward New Zealand, striking the country on the 17th. Hurricane-force winds of up to 80 mph were recorded in some areas, including New Zealand's capital city of Wellington. Blizzard conditions that included high winds, snow, rain, hail, and sleet, persisted in parts of South Otago and Southland on the South Island for six days in the midst of lambing season. It was feared that up to one million lambs perished due to the extremely wet, cold conditions. According to a local meteorologist, the polar jet stream, which typically lies south of the country rose over the South Island and lower North Island, bringing high winds, heavy snow, and cold temperatures.
19th: In the western Pacific, Typhoon Fanapi roared ashore over southern Taiwan. A Category 2 storm at impact, with maximum sustained winds of 101 mph, Fanapi dumped copious amounts of rain, including 1080mm of rain in Majia, a rural township in Pingtung County. Two people were killed, more than 100 were injured, and thousands were evacuated from their homes as the first storm to directly strike Taiwan this year moved across the island and headed for China.
21st: The sky burst open over the South Korean capital leading to the biggest one-day rainfall of the year. Rainfall at Seoul city was 257 mm, within 12 hours as of 1200 UTC, Tuesday. Most of this rain fell within a six-hour stretch ended 0800 UTC. The trigger for the rain was a cold front ahead of which strong southwesterly winds piled in a shot of tropical moisture. At the Gimpo airport, winds gusted to 76 kph as the heaviest rains (rate of 100 mm/hr according to local media) kicked in.
27th: Los Angeles baked in record temperatures, bringing sweltering scenes to the West Coast metropolis nearly a month after the end of the main August heat. As firefighters remained on alert in tinderbox conditions around the outskirts of the city, temperatures hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) in downtown, the highest since records began in 1877. "There was a spike around noon that bumped temperatures up," said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service, after the old record of 112 degrees, set on June 26, 1990, was beaten shortly after midday.
30th: Searchers scoured muddy river banks and debris-clogged gullies for more victims of Tropical Storm Nicole as the confirmed death toll in Jamaica from floods and mudslides rose to five. Rain continued to fall on the capital, Kingston, and emergency workers were trying to locate at least 14 more missing people, about half of whom were believed to have been swept away in landslides that roared through a shantytown.

World weather news, August 2010

1st: In Nicosia, Cyprus, the temperature of 45.6C was the highest recorded since the beginning of last century, the second highest was 44.4C, recorded in Nicosia on August 8, 1956. The maximum temperature in Nicosia on Sunday was 8.4C higher than normal while minimum temperature reached 29C, 7C higher than normal. Prodromos, on the Troodos range, recorded a temperature of 36.1C, 8.2C above normal. Humidity was also high across Cyprus.
4th: Today in Russia the temperature reached 36.6C in Moscow; St. Petersburg reached 33.3C. Searing heat has invaded eastern Belarus, where readings to 37 C or 38 C have been reached. In the Ukraine, the worst of the heat has backed westward to Kiev, where August 4 has become the hottest day (37-38C) of the summer thus far. And it was near 40C yet again in Luhansk.
4th: Heavy rains hindered efforts by workers to repair reservoirs and place sandbags along breached riverbanks as the death toll from China's worst flooding in a decade climbed above 1,000. Thousands of workers rushed to repair 51 small reservoirs that suffered damage and to fortify riverbanks along the Songhua River after floods triggered by torrential rains pounded northeastern Jilin province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Flooding overwhelmed major roads after some portions of the Songhua reached water levels twice as high as normal. The death toll for China's worst flooding in a decade rose to 1,072 people, with 619 still missing. The floods have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions. There had been flooding all over China this year. About 875,000 homes have been destroyed, 9.61 million people evacuated, and 22 million acres (8.76 million hectares) of crops ruined, according to the state flood control office.
5th: A large chunk of ice broke off the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland into the Nares Strait. The ice piece was 250 square km in size - about one quarter of the floating ice shelf portion of the Petermann Glacier. Icebergs calving off the Petermann Glacier are not uncommon; however, the recently new iceberg was the largest in the Arctic since 1962. The ice was expected to move slowly southward through Baffin Bay toward the east coast of Canada, potentially posing a threat to shipping and fishing interests as it moved into busier waters.
5th: The number of people hit by Pakistan's worst floods in generations rose to four million, as thousands waded through water or crammed into cars to escape drowning villages. The United Nations rushed a top envoy to Pakistan to mobilise international support and address the urgent plight of millions affected by torrential monsoon rains across the volatile country that have killed around 1,500. The disaster is now into its second week and the rains are spreading into Pakistan's most populous provinces of Punjab and Sindh, as anger mounts against the government response after villages and farmland were washed away.
7th: Belarus has also been affected by the record breaking heatwave across parts of Europe. Today, Belarus broke their all-time high temprature record. The temperature hit 38.9C in Gomel, in the south-west of the country.
8th: A second extreme rainfall event this month occurred in China on the 8th in a remote region of the northwestern province of Gansu. In Zhouqu county, several villages were leveled by landslides triggered by the rainfall. Water-borne diseases were a significant threat in the region, as water supplies were contaminated. Very warm temperatures hampered rescue efforts as daily maximum temperatures hovered around 34C. While torrential rains were the direct cause, tree cutting that left the dry hills exposed and the weakening of cliff faces by a massive 2008 earthquake were seen as contributing factors. At least 1,435 people were killed in the landslides, while 330 people remained missing.
9th: Major flooding in Central Europe killed at least 11 people and damaged hundreds of homes and businesses. About 1,400 residents were forced to evacuate along the Neisse River in Germany. The Neisse topped 7m, nearly 4.5m above its normal level. A dike broke near Bad Muskau, Poland, flooding two villages; fortunately, due to early evacuations, no lives were lost. Damages were estimated to be over 215 million U.S. dollars in the Czech Republic alone.
11th-13th: Fires broke out in northern Portugal on the 11th and have now spread to northern Spain near the boarders of Spain and Portugal. The blazes hit near the village of Fornelos de Montes and are still raging. 50 people have been evacuated from a village across the border in Portugal's Peneda-Geres national park. Two firefighters have perished in the fires across Spain, while another two have perished in the fires across Portugal. Reports say all fires are now under control and with tempratures dropping fires should be out in a matter of days.
15th: Drought conditions and a heatwave engulfed the northern half of British Columbia, Canada during the first half of August. The region received only 25 to 50 percent of its average rainfall during June and July. Several rivers were at 10 to 20 year lows, threatening local fish stocks and water supplies. Under a ridge of high pressure, many high temperature records were broken. Squamish reached 36.7C on the 14th, shattering the previous record set in 2008 by 5C. The hot weather sparked 25 new wildfires on the 14th and 15th (270 burning in total) as nearly 75 percent of British Columbia was under high or extreme wildfire danger. The heatwave also extended northwest into Alaska. On August 15th, Fairbanks recorded a high temperature of 32.8C, breaking the old record of 30C previously set in 1926. This marks only the fifth time that the August temperature surpassed 32.2C in the city since 1904, when record keeping began.
15th-21st: Yet another wave of heat has hit Japan with temperatures sizzling to near record highs. The scorching summer weather has left an estimated 132 dead fue to the heat and another 30,000 people rushed to hospital with heatstroke. The temprature in Tokyo has repeatedly topped 37C - likewise for other locations around the country. The government said that over half of those suffering heatstroke were over 65 years old. Heatwaves also hit Japan during June and July.
16th: Russia's two-month long record heatwave and drought is set to come to a dramatic end as a severe storm is heading for Moscow. The storm has already lashed St. Petersburg leaving 100,000 without power, rail services were halted and trees fell in high winds. Moscow is expected to be hit later today with heavy rain and gale force winds. Today temperatures dropped to around 24C, after nearing 40C for weeks. Fires raging the country are also now under control. The storm is expected to cause flash flooding during the early hours of the morning.
19th: After record warm temperatures, drought, wildfires, and poor air quality during July, the dismal conditions continued through mid-August across western Russia. The head of the state weather service claimed that the heatwave of 2010 was the worst in 1,000 years of recorded Russian history. Unofficial estimates placed the death toll near 15,000 people across Russia, with 7,000 in Moscow alone. At the beginning of August, 1,740 square km were burning with over 600 active fires. Outside Moscow, Russia's most deadly wildfire since 1972 charred homes and farmland. A major impact from the fires and heat were the loss of wheat crops. Russia is the world's third-largest exporter of wheat and had recently slashed its harvest forecast from 90 million metric tons to 60 million metric tons. Due to the shortage, the 18 million metric tons that were to be exported would no longer leave the country - threatening wheat prices worldwide. Economists predicted the heat and fire would cause over $15 billion in loss of economic growth this year. Military and nuclear installations were also threatened across the country by the fires, prompting the emergency transport of missiles and nuclear fuels out of harm's way. The average daily maximum temperature in Moscow for early August is 21C; during the first half of August 2010, temperatures were 15C above average. The two-month long heatwave finally broke on August 19th as a cold front moved across western Russia, bringing rain and much cooler temperatures and clearing the thick smog that had hovered over Moscow for weeks.
20th: Reports show that tempratures across Greece remain a few degrees above average and the country is therefore still in the grip of a heatwave. The Greek islands have recorded 41C over the last 3 days and tsuch temperatures are expected to continue or even rise slightly for another week.
21st: Both Turkey and Greece are experiencing forest fires, following similar activity in Russia, Spain, France, Portugal, and many other Central European countries. The forest fires across Turkey and Greece broke out during the 21st and are thought to have started due to the on-going heatwave there. Dozens of people have been evacuated from their homes across the western half of Turkey as a rash of fires threatened a cluster of villages. Strong gusty winds have helped the fires grow and spread and are making the situation harder to control
23rd: Flooding has forced the evacuation of more than a quarter-million people in northern China along its border with North Korea. Heavy rains over the last several days caused the Yalu river, which marks the border, to breach its banks, although the water level had started to fall late Sunday.
23rd: During the early hours of the morning, a hailstorm battered the North-West of Poland bringing down trees and power lines. The storm was describes a "freak" due to the fist size hailstorm which fell for around 4 minutes. Properties and homes were damages and 3 people were injured. Torrential rain followed the hailstorm.
24th: Aid agency Oxfam warned Tuesday of a "double disaster" for millions of people in Niger where heavy rains and flooding are compounding food shortages caused by a prolonged drought. The United Nations says more than seven million people are facing starvation in Niger - more than half the population - following the drought, and Oxfam says the few crops that survived are now being destroyed by floods.
24th: Tropical Storm Mindulle made landfall along Vietnam's north-central coast on August 24th, near the city of Vinh. With maximum sustained winds of 70mph, Mindulle dumped up to 275mm of rain near Vinh within a 12-hour period. Preliminary reports stated that ten people were killed, 47,000 homes were destroyed, and 158,000 acres (64,000 hectares) of rice fields were destroyed.
27th: Landslides and floods triggered by torrential rains swept through a town in northern Turkey, killing at least 12 people. The landslide hit dozens of homes in Gundogdu, in the tea-growing Black Sea province of Rize. The region has become prone to landslides because of deforestation to clear way for plantations. The rains began late on Thursday, as many people were breaking their dawn-to-dusk fasts for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
27th: Floods and landslides have killed at least 34 dead and affected some 84,000 people in Nicaragua this rainy season, which began on May 15. Of those killed, 23 died in August, Army Colonel Nestor Solis told local media. This week alone has seen eight people killed so far by torrential rains, including a four-year-old girl crushed by a tree in the northern department of Jinotega.
30th: Hundreds of ancient sites have been discovered by aerial surveys, thanks to a dry start to the summer, English Heritage has said. The surveys show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby. The newly-discovered Roman and prehistoric settlements include a site near Bradford Abbas, Dorset. The Roman camp was revealed in June after three sides became visible in sun-parched fields of barley.
31st: The latest from the India Meteorology Department is that Mumbai Colaba, as of the end of today, has seen 3,013 mm of rain for the year thus far. Normal rainfall for a year is 192cm. The wettest year there was 1954 when 3,482 mm fell. Normal rainfall during September is 259 mm. Thereafter, normal rainfall through the end of the year is less than 100 mm.
31st: he worst Asian Monsoon rains in decades continued to devastate Pakistan through the month of August. The United Nations Secretary General toured the aftermath and declared that he had never witnessed such devastation. Across the country more than 1,600 people were killed by the floods and six million were forced to flee their homes. In total, about 20 million were affected. Entire villages were submerged as an estimated 20 percent (160,000 square km) of the country was under water. About 7 million hectares of agricultural land was flooded and more than 200,000 animals were killed. Rivers in the southern province of Sindh overflowed their banks as floodwaters from the upper Indus River basin flowed southward toward the Arabian Sea. In Thatta, a city in Sindh with a population of about 300,000, about 95 percent of the residents were forced to evacuate toward the end of August - nearly a month after the torrentials rains fell in the northern part of the country. Fears of water-borne disease were heightened as flood waters began to recede, leaving large pools of stagnant water. By the end of the month, thousands were being treated in local clinics for illnesses such as dysentery and malaria. Some estimates place total damages from the flooding at 15 billion U.S. dollars. It is interesting to note that the flooding in Pakistan was connected to the drought and heat wave conditions in Russia. An unusually strong polar jet stream shifted northward of Moscow and then plunged south toward Pakistan. This pattern remained in place for more than a month, bringing hot air into Russia and preventing rainfall. The low pressure systems that would normally bring precipitation were forced around the jet and southwward into Pakistan, where they combined with heavy monsoon rains to help create the devastating floods. Also noteworthy, experts said that the scale of the disaster was exacerbated by deforestation and changes in land use over time in the impacted areas. The Asian Monsoon season lasts through September.

World weather news, July 2010

1st: Britain has had the driest first six months of the year for more than eight decades, amid warnings the lack of rain was putting pressure on water supplies. Official figures showed the average rainfall across the country between January and June was 356.8mm. This made it the driest start to a year since 1929, when 275.7mm was recorded.
1st: Hurricane Alex, the first of the Atlantic season, battered northeast Mexico with torrential rain and violent winds after disrupting oil clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Alex roared ashore late Wednesday as a Category Two storm with its eye 56km north of La Pesca, Mexico. Mexican officials reported no immediate casualties, though a 23-year-old Mexican was killed when the storm first touched southern Mexico earlier in the week, and at least 10 people died as Alex passed through Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador over the weekend.
4th-7th: An oppressive heat wave on across the eastern U.S. and eastern Canada led to soaring temperatures - many of which were in the triple digits. Hundreds of maximum high and minimum high temperatures were broken from North Carolina (U.S.) to Quebec (Canada). On July 5th, Montfort Hospital in Ottawa, Canada reported the highest number of hospital visits ever recorded in a single day. On the 6th, Milton, Massachusetts recorded a minimum temperature of 77F, breaking the old record of 73F set in 2003 and a maximum temperature of 99F, breaking the previous record of 98F set on this date in 1911. The same day, temperatures at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut reached 102F, tying with July 3rd, 1966 and August 9th, 2001 for the all-time hottest temperature on record at that locale. On July 7th, Raleigh/Durham International Airport in North Carolina also reported a maximum temperature of 102F, breaking the previous daily record of 100F set in 1977.
5th: At least two people died as a heat wave spread across 16 provinces in northern China during the first week in July. On the 5th, temperatures in Beijing reached 40.6C - the highest recorded temperature in July for the city since national records began in 1951. That same day Beijing reported its largest single-day water consumption since tap water use began in 1910. In several cities, overheated cars reportedly caught fire and hospital visits spiked due to heat-related illnesses. The hot, dry weather also brought huge swarms of locusts to several parts of China. Temperatures well above normal and precipitation 50-90 percent below normal for this time of year contributed to the pests ravaging 9.6 million acres of grassland in Inner Mongolia.
6th-11th: Europe endured the first heatwave of the year; Northern and Western Europe endured over a week of 32C+. Temperatures soared in Germany, France, Spain, the UK and many other Western European Countries to 30C. Temperatures in Spain and Germany were close to 40C for many days. Night temperatures stayed above 20C in many places.
7th: Reservoirs along the Texas-Mexico border rose to their highest levels in decades after days of drenching rain, forcing officials to close two border bridges Wednesday, dump water into flooded rivers and evacuate tens of thousands from homes as a new storm headed toward the region. The dramatic rise of the Rio Grande caused by Hurricane Alex and continuing rains forced the closure of one major border crossing between downtown Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and another crossing known as the Colombia Bridge, about 20 miles upriver.
11th: Russia's nationwide highest recorded temperature in history was set on 11 July, in Yashkul, Kalmykia, at 44.0C. The previous high temperature record was 43.8C, on 6 August 1940, also in Kalmykia.
12th-13th: Typhoon Conson (locally named Basyang) - the first tropical storm of the northwestern Pacific to obtain hurricane strength this year\u2014formed on July 12th, gaining strength to a Category 1 typhoon. The storm made landfall over the northern Philippine island of Luzon on July 13th with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and was downgraded to tropical storm status as it weakened over land. Heaviest rainfall totals of 165mm were reported in the municipality of Daet. The storm left at least 20 people dead and more than 40 million without power
12th: At least eight people have been injured after a tornado struck a German island in the North Sea. The tornado hit a campsite with about 100 people on the island of Duene, off the coast of the larger island Heligoland, at 1315GMT. Storms have also hit other parts of the country amid a heatwave in Germany, with temperatures reaching 40C. Two people were seriously injured, and at least six people were less badly hurt, reports say. The tornado destroyed the campsite and knocked over light aircraft at a nearby airfield.
12th: Heavy rains in New Delhi killed 11 people and flooded construction sites for the Commonwealth Games as the Indian capital races to be ready for the October event, officials said on Tuesday. An intense monsoon storm dumped 51mm of rain on the city in just three hours during Monday night rush hour, uprooting trees and bringing the city to a virtual standstill.
13th: Heavy rains after weeks of drought turned the streets of Vietnamese capital Hanoi into rivers up to half a metre deep. A heavy downpour that lasted for more than two hours forced motorbike commuters to push their machines through the dirty water and trees were down. A meteorologist said the city centre was hardest hit, with about 120mm of rain falling in the rush-hour period.
14th: Workers raced to build waterways to drain overflowing reservoirs in southeastern China and thousands were evacuated following torrential rains that triggered flash floods. Heavy rains overwhelmed three reservoirs in Poyang county in northern Jiangxi province, forcing the evacuation of more than 10,000 people. Torrential storms have pelted the Yangtze River basin this week - including parts of Sichuan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces. In western China, the death toll from landslides triggered by heavy rains rose to 41, with dozens still missing. In the worst-hit community of Xiaohe in Yunnan province, the death toll climbed to 17 following a landslide that swept through town before dawn on Tuesday. Two landslides killed 14 in neighboring Sichuan province while in Hunan province, 10 people including four young children died in two separate slides this week..
14th-16th: At least eight people were killed and seven were missing as heavy rains lashed central and western Japan. Towns and farmland were submerged under water for days due to the downpours. In Shobara, 64mm of rain fell in one hour, breaking the hourly rainfall record for the city.
14th: Doha (Qatar) recorded its highest temperature in 40 years according to the Qatar Meteorological Office. 50.4C and Tuesday's 50C were the highest experienced in Doha in some four decades.
15th: Polar air from Antarctica gripped parts of southern South America, including Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, southern Brazil, and eastern Peru. At least nine people died in Argentina. In Buenos Aires, the minimum temperature plunged to -1.5C on the 15th - the city's lowest recorded temperature in a decade. At least twenty-eight people also reportedly perished due to the cold weather in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruaguay. In the Peruvian capital of Lima, temperatures dropped to 8C, the lowest temperatures recorded in the city in 46 years. Approximately 10 percent of the alpacas in the Andes succumbed to the weather, as they were not able survive to such cold environments. A state of emergency was declared in 16 of Peru's 24 regions.
15th-16th: The long dry spell in the North West of the UK seems to have halted for the time being. A series of low pressure systems passed the UK on the 14th and 15th bringing localised flooding and strong winds to parts of Cornwall, Devon and Wales. Torrention downpours pounded these parts throughout the day - and gusts of up to 60mph were recorded on the South coast. During Thursday (15th) night a deep area of low pressure from the Atlantic came in to the UK - bringing heavy rain and gusty winds to many Northern and Western areas. The worst affected area's were Gwynedd and Anglesey. Severe gale force winds and gusts recorded as high as 84mph brought down branches, trees and even roof tiles. Uprooted trees blocked roads and power lines came down - leaving around 1,500 people without electricity.
16th: A mother and her seven-year-old son were found dead beneath a rock at their home in Japan, bringing the death toll from heavy rains, floods and landslides this week to five. "We discovered the mother and the boy and they were confirmed dead at the hospital," a police official said in the western prefecture of Shimane.
17th: OA tornado hit the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico. The tornado suddenly came in from the sea and battered the XXI Central American and Caribbean Games. The games were delayed a day as the twister slammed into the Olympic stadium in the western town of Mayaguez, bringing down the lighting tower, smashed cars and injuring 5 people.
17th: Redeveloping thunderstorms in eastern Kentucky (USA) led to flash flooding that killed two people and damaged several homes in Pike County. The National Weather Service received a local report that 111mm of rain fell in a three and a half hour period in that area.
17th-26th: High temperatures and sparse rainfall dominated the weather of Russia during June and July. With temperatures hovering 4-8C above average across a large swath of Russia, daily record high temperatures of 33C and 35C were recorded in Moscow on July 16th and 17th, breaking records that dated back to 1951 and 1938, respectively. On July 26th, the city recorded its highest temperature ever of 37.2C, breaking the previous record of 36.8C set 90 years ago. The hot weather has had deadly consequences. More than 1,200 drowning deaths were reported as people tried to escape the heat across Russia. The worst drought conditions since 1972 destroyed nine million hectares, an estimated 20 percent of the nation's crops, including grain, vegetables and fodder. Additionally, a state of emergency was declared as 948 forest fires covering 26,000 hectares were burning in 18 provinces. Twenty-six forest fires and 34 peat fires were burning in the Moscow region on the 26th, leading to dangerous air pollution levels. Mosekomonitoring, the Moscow governement agency in charge of monitoring air pollution, said that smog levels were five to eight times greater than normal. According to Rianovosti, Russian meteorologists stated that the summer of 2010 was the hottest on record for the country.
20th-22nd: In east Africa, three days of rain in Burkina Faso left one person dead and 20,000 homeless after floods swept through the eastern portion of the country.
21st: The centre of Perth (Scotland) has been seriously affected by flooding after 40mm of rain fell during the morning. Dozons of homes and businesses were flooded in the area, and Tayside Fire and Rescue were called out from across Tayside to pump out flood water from buildings.
22nd-24th: Up to 305mm of rain fell across parts of eastern Iowa, northwestern Illinois, and southeastern Wisconsin during a 48-hour period. The Lake Delhi Dam in Iowa failed as floodwater from the Maquoketa River bore a 30-foot wide hole in the earthen structure. The river crested upstream of the dam at 7.48m, more than 3m above flood stage and nearly 1m higher than the previous record set in 2004. Dozens of homes and businesses were affected and damages were initially estimated by a local official to exceed $28 million U.S. dollars.
23rd: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a giant hailstone that fell in central South Dakota has broken U.S. records, even though the man who found it says it melted somewhat while waiting to be evaluated. The NOAA's National Climate Extremes Committee says the hailstone found in the town of Vivian today measures 8 inches in diameter and weighs 1 pound, 15 ounces. The committee says the South Dakota ice chunk breaks records set by hailstones discovered in Nebraska and Kansas.
23rd: At least 21 people have been killed in floods and a landslide triggered by heavy rains in Indonesia. The landslide on Buru island in eastern Maluku province took place after heavy rains in a hilly area.
23rd: Weary travellers who were stranded overnight at a Milwaukee airport began flying out Friday afternoon, one day after powerful storms pounded southeastern Wisconsin and caused widespread flooding that grounded all flights. Both commercial runways at Mitchell International Airport were covered with water Friday morning. Crews reopened one runway about 1 p.m. and the second a few hours later, airport spokesman Ryan McAdams said. Wisconsin's governor declared a state of emergency in the area. The airport shut as storms dumped 5.5 inches of rain on the city.
24th: Typhoon Chanthu made landfall in China on the after months of flooding in China. The storm moves in with winds of 78mph and serious flooding, before weakening into a Tropical Storm. Two people were killed directly from this Typhoon's flooding.
25th: Flooding and landslides caused by heavy rain have killed at least 10 people in Vietnam's northern mountainous provinces near China. The biggest death toll of five came in Ha Giang province, where people were buried in their homes or swept away in floods. Hundreds of houses in five northern provinces have been inundated while roads and crops were severely damaged in up to 300mm of rain, which began falling on Thursday..
25th: Another wave of oppressive heat clamped down on a broad swath of Eastern states in the USA, with temperatures in the high 90s and 100s and residents scrambling for shade or just staying indoors. With the heat and humidity combining for a possible heat index of over 110 degrees, the weather service issued an excessive heat warning for the first time this year for an area stretching from south of Washington to north of Baltimore, along the Interstate 95 corridor. The thermometer hit 100F in Washington and Baltimore by mid-afternoon, where the heat index was 109F. In Norfolk, Va., it was 104F and 108F with the heat index. Elsewhere, record highs for 24 July of 97F in New York and Philadelphia and 99F in Newark, N.J., were reported.
26th: Darwin, capital of Australia's Northern Territory, had its hottest night since records began in 1941. On Sunday night the minimum temperature was 26.6C, well above the July average of 19.2C. The previous record for the hottest July night in Darwin was 25.1C on 9th July 1978.
26th: Many people in the City of Moscow woke up to a thick acrid fog caused from forest and peat fires across hundreds of acres of countryside. The fires were caused by the record breaking heatwave that has been swealtering Russia and much of Europe for over a month now. Firefighters were trying to put out 60 fires covering 59 hectares in the countryside outside Moscow on Monday; water-bombing planes were also being used to tackle the fires but made slow progress.
27th: After three days of heavy monsoon rain in North Pakistan, severe flooding has hit many parts of the country. Weather Officials say that Pashawar recieved 300mm of rain in the last three days.They say that is the largest amount of rainfall in the city for decades. The rest of Northern Pakistan received between 250mm and 300mm rain over the three days. Officials also added that nearly 400,000 have been displaced in just two days.
29th: The mercury hit 37.2C in Joensuu in eastern Finland, marking the highest ever temperature reading in Finland. The previous hottest day on record in Finland was July 9, 1914, when a reading of 35.9C was recorded in Turku. In Finland, temperature beyond 25C is seen as hot summer weather. Temperature above 30 degrees rarely appears in the Nordic country even in summer. However, there have been readings of over 30 degrees nearly every day this July. Temperatures exceeded 34C in several places in Finland on Wednesday 28th, while in Lahti in southern Finland, the temperature topped 35.6C. The unprecedented hot summer has increased wildfire risks in the capital region. The rescue department of Helsinki has received about 30 wildfire alarms so far this month.
30th: Heat advisories were posted from the Carolinas to the Great Plains as the South (USA) continued to roast Friday under temperatures and humidity that made beaches feel more like bakeries. Forecasts for Friday highs were mainly in the upper 90s to 100 throughout much of the South. The heat index, which combines humidity and temperature, was well over 100 degrees from South Carolina to eastern Oklahoma. Forecasters say high humidity from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic is exacerbating the Southern staple of summertime heat. The weather service issued an excessive heat warning for the South Carolina coast from Charleston into Georgia. It was the 11th straight day of a heat advisory or warning on the South Carolina coast.
31st: Severe drought plagued Bolivia during July. The dry season typically begins in August, but the rains stopped earlier than normal this year. Crops and livestock - the primary livelihood for much of the country's residents - were majorly affected.
31st: Dozens of people were killed and thousands had to be rescued after flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains that struck Afghanistan's northeast. The rugged and remote area has been hit by the same weather responsible for flooding which killed at least 400 people in neighbouring Pakistan in recent days, causing widespread destruction.
31st: Arctic sea ice extent averaged for July was the second lowest in the satellite record, after 2007. After a slowdown in the rate of ice loss, the old, thick ice that moved into the southern Beaufort Sea last winter is beginning to melt out. Average ice extent for July was 8.39 million square kilometres, 1.71 million square kilometres below the 1979 to 2000 mean, but 260,000 square kilometres above the average for July 2007, the lowest July in the thirty-two-year satellite record. Stormy, cloudy, and relatively cool weather persisted through the month, which helped slow the rate of ice loss. The daily rate of decline for July was 77,000 square kilometres per day, close to the 1979 to 2000 average of 84,400 square kilometres.
31st: July was a hot month in Moscow and across many other parts of Russia. The highest temperature on record (in roughly 130 years of Moscow weather records) was reached on July 29, this being 38.2C. This broke the previous high mark of 37.5 C set only three days earlier, on July 26. This was nearly tied on July 28. The normal high for this, the hottest time of year, is only 23C. Moreover, July 2010 was the hottest July in the climate record of Moscow, as well as the hottest month overall. In St Petersburg July had a monthly mean temperature of 24.2C. Normal mean July temperature is 15.2C.

World weather news, June 2010

1st: Skiing on Scotland's snow slopes looks set to continue into the summer month of June as new figures reveal the best season in 14 years. Since late November, Scotland's five mountain resorts have attracted 373,782 customers. The ski season is estimated to have attracted �37.5m into the local economy. With fresh snow on the slopes, CairnGorm Mountain expects skiing during the first weekend of June. Recent figures from Ski Scotland showed that this season's figures were better than the last bumper season of 2000-2001. Chair of Ski Scotland Heather Negus said: "All winter, we realised we were heading for a great season. "We had hoped to match the figure for 2001, but didn't realise we had beaten it until recently, when everything was added up - and of course, CairnGorm Mountain is still operating, so we're still counting."
1st: A cavernous and almost perfectly round sinkhole swallowed an entire intersection in Guatemala City during a tropical storm, spooking people in the neighborhood but exciting geologists. The hole is 20m across and plunges nearly 30m deep. Geologists said Tuesday that the circular shape suggested a cave formation underneath, but what exactly caused the sinkhole was still a mystery.
2nd: Three Central American countries battered by landslides and flooding are reassigning aid loans to help offset millions of dollars in damage caused by the season's first tropical storm, which killed 184 people. Authorities in Guatemala - the hardest hit by Tropical Storm Agatha - said Wednesday that $190 million in loans will be used to rebuild dozens of bridges and renovate homes for nearly 25,000 families.
2nd: A lightning bolt has struck nine people waiting to see the Old Faithful geyser erupt at Yellowstone National Park in the US state of Wyoming. All the visitors were on the boardwalk or walkways around the geyser when the single lightning bolt struck. One of the nine people hurt was taken to hospital in Idaho for treatment.
2nd: Parts of southwestern China experienced heavy rains from May 31st - June 2nd. More than 230mm were recorded in Guangxi's Cenxi City within a 12-hour period.
2nd: Three people were killed and hundreds evacuated after days of heavy rain in central Europe caused flooding that cut off villages and threatened to burst dykes.. Two men drowned in swollen rivers in the Czech Republic where a 19-year-old man died when his car hit a truck after skidding on a road that was suddenly flooded. In neighbouring Hungary, about 2,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes in the northern towns of Paszto and Hasznos after flooding and because a dyke threatened to burst. In the northeast of the country, about 60 roads were closed and 18 towns were temporarily cut off, according to a spokesman for the emergency services. A level-three alert, the highest, was declared because of the high water level. In the south, near the Serbian border, a forest of some 20 hectares (50 acres) was almost entirely uprooted in recent days due to the floods. Hundreds more people were evacuated in eastern Slovakia where transport was disrupted on Tuesday night as floods rose after several days of heavy rainfall, rescuers said.
3rd: The death toll from flooding and landslides in southern China climbed to 38, as torrential rains moved further west in the country. Rain storm-triggered landslides struck five counties in Guangxi region on Wednesday, leaving 38 dead and another 14 people missing. Heavy rainstorms started pounding the region on Monday, triggering the deadly landslides and forcing the evacuation of nearly 80,000 people.
3rd: The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis has reached a new record for 2010. According to Dr. James Hansen, who is the director of GISS in New York, the new record is particularly meaningful because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect. Also, the tropical Pacific Ocean has changed from warm El Nino conditions to ENSO-neutral and is likely headed into the cool La Nina phase of the Southern Oscillation. The 12-month running mean global temperature may continue to rise for a few more months before the ENSO change causes the next decline. It is likely that global temperature for calendar year 2010 will exceed the 2005 record, but that is not certain if a deep La Nina develops quickly, says Hansen.
3rd: An EF-1 water spout-turned-tornado struck the Australian coastal town of Lennox Head in northern New South Wales. Unseasonably warm ocean temperatures created a pocket of warm air which collided with a cold air mass, leading to a cluster of severe thunderstorms that spawned the twister. This was an extremely unusual event, as it occurred during austral winter and the region's severe thunderstorm season is typically November - April. With wind speeds reaching more than 90mph, dozens of homes were damaged or destroyed.
5th: Several thousands of people were still stranded in northern Hungary as the flooding situation remained critical after over a month of near-continuous rainfall. Along the banks of the Hernad, Sajo and Boldva rivers some 2,300 people were evacuated due to the water flooding homes in the towns and villages in the northeast region. Over 12,000 police officers, soldiers and firemen are involved in the rescue operation, which has enjoyed a rare dry spell since Friday that is forecast to last for the next week. In Budapest the docks of the flooded river Danube were shut and the banks of Margaret island, a major tourist destination in the capital, were protected by sand bags.
6th: Thousands of firefighters and soldiers are strengthening dykes that are crumbling in a second wave of massive flooding in southern Poland following weeks of torrential rains. Some 3,000 people have been evacuated from eight villages after the Vistula River spilled over near Szczucin, where massive flooding first hit in May. The Vistula was also inundating the streets and house in a part of Sandomierz, after dykes repaired after the May flooding, succumbed under new flood wave. Some villages were cut off and relying on army helicopters to drop supplies after parts of roads were washed away.
6th: Tornadoes and thunderstorms tore through the Midwest USA, killing at least seven people in Ohio and triggering the automatic shutdown of a nuclear power plant in Michigan. In northwest Ohio, seven people were confirmed dead in mostly rural Lake Township south of Toledo. Tornadoes destroyed dozens of homes and heavily damaged the police headquarters and high school. "Windows were blown out of the buildings, buses overturned, the police department lost all of their vehicles except the ones that were occupied by officers," said a police spokesman in a neighboring township where calls were rerouted. Severe storms caused the automatic shutdown of the Fermi 2 nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie in southeast Michigan after a key area of the plant lost its power feed. Tornadoes also touched down in several locations in central Illinois around Peoria, with reports of dozens of injuries and damaged buildings.
7th: Strong wind and rain killed 10 people, damaged property and flooded homes in southern Pakistan in the last 24 hours, but the disaster Cyclone Phet threatened to bring was averted. "The death toll has gone up to 10. Seven died in Karachi and three were killed in Hyderabad," Sindh province's health minister said. Property was damaged in the towns of Thatta and Badin, and a small building collapsed in Karachi. Cyclone Phet turned into a low depression after making landfall in Thatta and Badin, and moved towards Rajasthan in India.
8th: Rain and a spring heat wave that is quickly melting mountain snowpack have sent rivers rising across the West, washing out small bridges and flooding homes in Wyoming and prompting some rafting companies to halt guided trips in Colorado. Authorities have handed out thousands of sandbags since the weekend. Rain has exacerbated the situation in many places.
8th: A flash flood swept away a municipal worker helping in evacuation efforts in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul. Heavy rains, which have been pounding the city since the weekend, caused a river on the city's Asian side to burst its banks, inundating dozens of houses.
8th: At least 12 people have died and five are missing after a packed ferry capsized in storms in north-east Bangladesh. The ferry was carrying about 35 passengers including many school children. The accident took place in Sunamganj district, about 140km north of Dhaka.
12th-20th: In Kuwait, five-straight days ended June 16 saw at least 48C; the 15th reached 50.6. Farther south, the worst of the heat happened a few days later. Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, hit the 50C, on June 20. Doha, Qatar, set highs above 48C on three-straight days though June 20. So much for cooling off the Gulf! Even the island setting of Manama, Bahrain, could not stave off the heat of a 46C afternoon on June 20, which seems to have marked the top of the heat (thus far).
14th: Record-busting rainfall and ensuing flooding in Oklahoma led to at least one death, with several dramatic rescues of people who took treetops and roofs to escape swift-moving waters. Fire officials in Oklahoma City and the nearby suburb of Edmond launched more than 60 swift-water rescues after thunderstorms dumped as much as 10 inches of rain in some areas in a matter of hours. More rain fell Monday night, and the National Weather Service said the 7.62 inches at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City topped the previous record of 7.53 inches set on Sept. 22, 1970.
14th-15th: With the monsoon season underway, heavy rain on June 14th-15th brought landslides and flooding to southeastern Bangladesh and western Myanmar. At least 58 people were killed in Bangladesh - mainly in the Cox's Bazaar region - as 240mm of rain fell within a 24-hour period and 120mm fell in a three-hour period in many areas. Cox's Bazaar district administrator stated that this was the worst rain event in three decades. In Myanmar, at least 63 people were killed and half a million homes and buildings damaged or destroyed as torrential rains pounded the area. Myanmar's Meteorological Department reported that 340mm of rain fell in one day in the town of Maungdaw, which lies on the border with Bangladesh.
15th: Rescuers airlifted survivors and searched for missing people in southern France after heavy storms triggered flash floods that killed at least 25 people. Nearly 2,000 rescue workers rushed in to help hundreds trapped in their vehicles, houses or on rooftops in the Draguignan area near the Mediterranean coast, while helicopters were sent in to airlift residents to safety. Emergency teams also moved 436 inmates from a flooded prison in Draguignan where the water covered the first two floors and they were taken to nearby jails. The floods were the worst there since 1827. The head of the emergency operation said more than 30cm of rain fell.
15th: As of mid-June, northern and northeastern Thailand was experiencing its worst drought in nearly 20 years. Thai officials declared 53 provinces disaster areas, with more than 6.4 million people affected and 58,300 acres of crops damaged by the dry weather. Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice. Production estimates for the August cycle - there are two to four annual cycles - fell from five million metric tons to two million.
15th: In June, Israel was in the midst of one of its longest and most severe droughts since the 1920s. (Drought data has been collected since 1915). Lasting six years to date, a meteorological station near Holon reported a deficit of 544mm of rain during that time, an amount that is slightly above the average annual rainfall for that area.
17th: Floods in southern China caused by torrential rain have killed 46 people since Sunday. Fifty people are missing, and about 238,000 people have been evacuated from their homes because of heavy rains that have pounded six provinces. Hundreds of flights in and out of Beijing have been cancelled or delayed because of severe thunderstorms. More than 33,000 homes have collapsed or been damaged. And forecasters say more rain is on the way.
17th: Heavy monsoon rains in western India have damaged houses and flooded parts of Maharashtra, killing at least 46 people. A government minister said landslides, flooding and electrocutions had led to the deaths. Some 600 houses have been damaged in the state. Suburban train services in the capital Mumbai have been disrupted after the tracks came under water.
17th: A slow-moving tropical storm named Blas has formed off Mexico's southwestern coast. The National Hurricane Center in Miami says the storm formed out of a tropical depression Thursday in the Pacific about 450km south-southwest of Manzanillo.
17th-24th: Over a ast stretch of Brazil's northeast floods killed have 45 people and destroyed towns, roads and bridges. Civil Defense officials say that 600 people are still listed as missing, but most of those are presumed to be safe, just unable to contact families or authorities because energy is still out and telephone service down. Brazil's government is releasing $56 million in immediate aid, but getting food, water, clothes and medicine to the hardest-hit areas is proving difficult. Residents are holed up in schools, churches and any other standing buildings. Some areas reportedly received more than 360mm of rain during this period.
20th-22nd: This week, exceptional heat has beset both sides of the Red Sea. On the Arabian side, searing offshore winds blowing down from the Arabian hinterland baked Jeddah on consecutive afternoons, on Monday and Tuesday. Respective highs of 51.8C and 52.0C were set before a sea breeze set in to stave off even further heating. In nearby Makkah, the middling of three 47C+ days, Monday, had 48.6C. Beyond the Red Sea, a vast swathe of the middle and eastern Sahara has baked during the last week or so. Cairo, Egypt, had its hottest day in years (at least 20, maybe many more) with 45.2C on Sunday, June 20. Highs to at least 48C have also been set since the middle of last week in a swathe from southern Egypt and northern Sudan west to at least northern Niger and the hinterland of Libya.
21st: In the midst of the rainy season, heavy precipitation and flooding led to at least 30 deaths in central Ghana, near the capital city of Accra. Ghanaian officials called the flood disaster the worst in recent memory.
24th: It has been hot across Nei Mongol and Heilongjiang (China); Buryatiya, Chita and Amur (Russia) and neighboring Mongolia. On the last three days, highs of 35C to 40C have been widespread, some sites having three-straight days of such heat. To illustrate the extreme variability of weather, a look at temperature patterns at Mohe, Heilongjiang, is telling. There were three-straight freezing nights (between -1C and 0C) through June 21. Then things heated quickly. Wednesday, it warmed from a morning low of 5.1C to an afternoon high of 36.9C. And today, June 24, has seen at least 38.3C. Incidentally, the lowest temperature in Mohe last winter was -43.9C,
26th: Workers struggled to repair a broken dyke in south China where persistent heavy rains and devastating floods have so far left at least 379 people dead. Bulldozers dumped rocks and soil to repair a breach in the dykes hemming in the Fu River, in Jiangxi province, which forced over 100,000 people from their homes earlier this week. More water may be on its way, as a flood crest passed through Xiang River in Hunan Province, making its way to the swollen Yangtze River.
27th: The intensity of ongoing heat over northeast China, eastern Mongolia and nearby Russia continues. As of Sunday, temperatures have reached 38C for the last five to six days. In the Russian region of Amur, Svobodnyy and Belogorsk 42C, on Friday. Normal high temperature in late June would be near 25C. In the neighboring region of Chita, bordering both Mongolia and China, the string of 100-degree days reached at least four, if not more, as of Sunday. In Borzya, not only were four days above 100F, but they were at least 40C. The full weight of heat reached the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, where Saturday saw 38.3C. This must rank amongst the highest temperatures ever reached in the city, which stands more than 1300m above sea level. Normally this time of year, highs are about 22-23C.
29th: Heavy rains caused floods that killed 21 people in Romania and thousands of others were evacuated from their homes on Tuesday as rivers threatened to burst their banks. People climbed trees to escape the rising water and many houses, roads and railway lines were destroyed or damaged by the floods. Nineteen died after being carried away by high waters and two others were killed by lightning.
29th: An electrical storm caused power failure in thousands of homes across north Wales. Many residents were woken by thunder at about 0100GMT. A Scottish Power spokesperson said 2,000-3,000 homes remained without power in north Wales, and everything was being done to reconnect them as soon as possible. BT said about 100 customers had been cut off and warned some might be a 'few days' before they were reconnected.
30th: Western Australia's average temperature during the 12 months to the end of June was 23.55C, matching the previous record of 23.55C set between October 2004 and September 2005. It is the third state to set or equal such a record in 2009-2010, following similar records set in Victoria and Tasmania for the twelve months to end of April. Temperatures in Western Australia have been consistently above average throughout the 12 month period. All 12 months were warmer than the long-term average. The most significant heat was in summer, which was the state's hottest on record, 1.32C above the long-term average. No individual month set a statewide record, although August and January both ranked as the second-hottest on record, with December, February and April all ranking third. June was 0.76C warmer than the long-term average, despite a cold finish in the state's south, including an equal state record low for June, -6.0C at Norseman Airport on 27 June.
29th-30th: Australia's biggest cities shivered through an Antarctic cold front which has brought some of the lowest temperatures in years. Sydney awoke to rare frost and temperatures of 4.3C on the 30th, its coldest June morning since 1983, a day after Melbourne flirted with its chilliest day on record. Capital city Canberra was carpeted in frost while Ballarat in Victoria, near Melbourne, Tuesday clocked 5.1C, its lowest in a decade. Forecasters blamed the cool spell on a blast of icy weather from the Antarctic.

World weather news, May 2010

1st-2nd: Violent thunderstorms unleashed tornados and flash floods over the southern United States over the weekend killing at least 22 people and forcing the Kentucky governor to declare a state of emergency. Governor Steve Beshear said on Monday that four people died in weather-related accidents in his state and requested federal assistance to deal with storm damage. In Mississippi, where tornados killed 10 people nine days ago, driving rains and more tornados tore through farming regions damaging homes and destroying crops. According to the National Weather Service, Bowling Green, Kentucky set an all-time daily rainfall record for May of 4.75 inches on the 1st. However, that record was broken the following day as 4.92 inches of precipitation was recorded. The combined total of 9.67 inches was the greatest two-day rainfall total for the area since records began in 1870. In Nashville, the most rain ever recorded in a single calender day fell on May 2nd - 7.25 inches - making the precipitation received on the previous day 6.32 inches the third-greatest rainfall total in Nashville's history.
4th: Widespread flooding in the southern US state of Tennessee caused by torrential rains has killed at least 18 people and thousands have sought shelter from muddy river waters. Coupled with heavy storms and deadly tornados, severe weather has now killed a total of 29 people in the states of Tennessee and Mississippi over the last week - storms which President Barack Obama described as "devastating." The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) confirmed the state fatalities including 10 dead in Nashville after the Cumberland River - looping through the iconic city famous for its musical heritage -- crested at about 16 metres late on Monday, submerging the metropolitan region. More than 40cm of rain fell on the region over two days, with isolated pockets in Tennessee seeing up to 50cm of rain on Saturday and Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. NWS warned of "an extremely dangerous situation" with highways and smaller roads impassable due to flooding.
4th: Heavy snowfall left thousands of homes without electricity and huge waves battered the coastline in southern France as winter made a surprise return. Trees and branches crashed down from the weight of snow and ruptured electricity cables in the southwest, cutting-off 23,000 homes in "an exceptional situation for the season", electricity company ERDF said. Snow also forced the airport in Perpignan to close and several flights were cancelled in Montpellier. Meanwhile on the French Riviera, which is preparing to host the Cannes Film Festival from May 12, ten-metre-high waves battered the coastline, leaving one woman with a fractured leg and causing major material damage.
6th: After more than a week of relatively subdued activity in late April, Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull Volcano began a fresh round of explosive ash eruptions in the first week of May. On the morning of May 6, 2010, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured this view of a thick plume of ash blowing east and then south from the volcano. Clouds bracket the edges of the scene, but the dark blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean show in the middle, and above them, a rippling, brownish-yellow river of ash.
7th: Heavy rains in northern Afghanistan during the first week in May caused major flooding, killing at least 100 people and leaving thousands of families homeless. Around ten thousand cattle were lost and thousands of acres of agricultural land were ruined due to the floods. Afghanistan is prone to natural disasters. Avalanches earlier this year killed more than 170 people along the Salang Pass north of Kabul.
9th: The death toll from fierce storms and torrential rains battering southern China has risen to at least 70 people with tens of thousands left homeless. The extreme weather was unleashed on Wednesday, toppling thousands of homes and destroying crops across vast swathes of agricultural land, the Xinhua news agency said, warning that more storms are forecast in the coming days. "The rainstorms triggered flash floods and mud-rock flows, swollen rivers, burst dikes, threatened reservoirs, and damaged highways, bridges and power and telecommunication facilities," It said the death toll rose to 70 after five people listed as missing in the eastern province of Jiangxi were found dead on Sunday. As of Friday, the storms had affected up to 2.55 million residents and 100,000 hectares of arable land, and toppled 9,900 houses, the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said in a statement.
10th: Multiple tornadoes killed at least two people in the central US state of Oklahoma, the Oklahoman daily said on its website. The Oklahoma Emergency Management Department said there were injuries from the severe storms and tornadoes they spawned statewide, but offered no numbers. However, a hospital spokeswoman told the daily that five people were being treated at the city's Moore Medical Center. As of late Monday, the daily said damage assessment from tornadoes and hailstorms was still ongoing around the state. In Oklahoma City, tornadoes ripped through the metro area tossing cars and flipping mobile homes, leaving several neighborhoods heavily damaged, the daily said. The OG&E power company reported 31,000 outages from the storm, including 28,000 in Oklahoma City.
11th: A cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland has forced airports in North Africa to shut for the first time, as well as hitting air travel in southern Spain. Morocco halted flights from Rabat, Casablanca and at least three other airports while, at one point, seven airports in Spain were closed. Turkey banned flights over its north-west for four hours from 1200 GMT. Ash said to be drifting towards south-east France is at high altitude and is not expected to affect airports there.
13th: The longest day is a mere six weeks away. Yet conditions across parts of the UK this week have been more reminiscent of late winter rather than late spring. Indeed some people in northern Britain have seen snow in the last few days, and hard frosts have occurred as far south as SE England. Arctic air has penetrated unusually far south for the time of year, such that some places have recorded their lowest May temperatures for well over a decade. Nevertheless, such a late wintry outbreak is not entirely without precedent. Indeed frost and snow have even occurred in June, most notably in 1975 when a blanket of snow briefly covered parts of lowland Britain. Cold weather has halted the growth of asparagus crops across Herefordshire and Worcestershire during its peak season. Farmers in the region have reported crops are 10% to 15% of what they should be for this time of year, because of the unusually cold spring.
17th: Flash floods triggered by days of heavy rain have killed at least four people, forced mass evacuations and cut off power to thousands in central Europe and weather forecasts offered no hope of respite in coming days. In southern Poland, one woman in her 60s and a 45-year-old man perished on Monday in separate incidents after being washed away by floodwaters. The Polish interior ministry said it expected to evacuate up to 2,000 people from their homes as floods submerged fields, roads and some railway lines. A 69-year-old woman also died on Monday in the neighboring Czech Republic where hundreds had to be evacuated, including 90 from a hospital in the town of Bohumin. More than 10,000 customers of Czech CEZ were left without power after trees fell on power lines in strong winds, and five railway lines and about 50 roads were shut. Parts of southern Poland also suffered power cuts. Unseasonably cold weather also drove up spot power prices. More than 2,000 people were forced from their homes in northern Hungary as heavy weekend rains blocked off villages and cut power supplies. One man was killed there on Sunday after an earth wall collapsed onto a house. In Hungary's third-biggest city of Miskolc, the mayor imposed emergency tap water restrictions and residents were building makeshift dams using logs, rocks and debris. In Slovakia, the government deployed troops alongside emergency services in the worst affected areas in the east and northwest of the country.
19th: Authorities in Oklahoma say several homes and businesses have been damaged by tornadoes. Few injuries were reported from the storms. Officials say two truck drivers were taken to hospitals their semitrailers toppled. The National Weather Service also received reports of a series of brief, small tornadoes in southwest Kansas; these weren't related to the super-cell tornado outbreak in Oklahoma.
21st: The Sri Lankan government says 20 people have died in floods and mudslides after a week of powerful storms brought heavy rain across the country. Most of the deaths occurred in western Gampaha district. Many homes have been inundated and roads washed out. The navy has stepped up operations to rescue those stranded and to distribute relief.
21st: Cyclone Laila weakened after battering India's southeastern coast with several days of torrential rain and high winds that claimed 26 lives. The storm, which formed over the Bay of Bengal, drenched the southern state of Tamil Nadu before making landfall further north Thursday in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, where it uprooted trees, electricity poles and destroyed communication lines. The heavy rains and strong winds damaged mango, banana and lime crops, with conservative estimates putting the losses at two billion rupees (41 million US dollars.)
21st: The Sri Lankan government says 20 people have died in floods and mudslides after a week of powerful storms brought heavy rain across the country.
24th: The death toll from flooding in Poland rose to 15 as torrential rain swelled major rivers to levels unseen in more than a century and rescuers from across Europe battled to prevent further tragedy. On May 16th-17th, up to 200mm of rain fell over southern Poland and the Czech Republic in a 24-hour period. Flood waters on the Vistula and another major river, the Oder, "are at a level unseen since 1884" and have inundated hundred of thousands of hectares, national fire brigade spokesman Pawel Fratcak said. In Warsaw, a major road running the length of the Vistula was closed to traffic due to fears that flood defences would give way. Around 200 schools were also closed in districts of the capital near the river. Defences have already given way near the south-eastern town of Sandomierz and in Plock, central Poland, causing flooding in several locations in those regions. Thousands have been evacuated across the country but thousands more have refused to leave their homes regardless of the risk posed by rising floodwaters. In 1997, Poland suffered a flood dubbed the worst in recent centuries which inundated vast swathes of the country, killing 54, causing billions of dollars in damage and forcing the evacuation of over 150,000 people.
24th: Police say a 6-year-old girl has died of injuries sustained when a tree fell on the car she was travelling in as a rare tornado ripped through eastern Germany. Police spokesman Wolfgang Kiessling in Dresden said Tuesday the girl was taken to the hospital late Monday where she died of her injuries. Three other people in the village of Grossenhain also were injured. Firefighters and emergency assistance crews were helping to clear fallen trees from roads and railway tracks on Tuesday as residents in the state of Saxony took stock after the storm that tore roofs off houses and scattered debris.
25th: A torrent of floods caused by heavy storms have killed 115 people in southern China, with 21 people still missing as weather reports show rains beginning to subside. Emergency rescue teams have been dispatched across southern China to help the 685,000 people evacuated as a result of the flooding, which has caused $2.2 billion in damages. China's rainy season, which began this month, follows the worst drought in a century for southern China's Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi regions. The drought affected 61 million people, leaving millions without drinking water and 5 million hectares left barren since last year. The floods hit 13 provinces, including Guangdong, Sichuan and Zhejiang, and damaged more than 80,000 homes and affected more than 10 million people, said a statement posted on the State Flood Control and Disaster Relief Headquarters website.
26th: The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland is no longer emitting any ash, according to the latest information received from the Icelandic Meteorological Office. Instead a plume of steam has been observed up to a height of around 3km, although the good news for air travel passengers is that UK airspace is not expected to be affected as a result. Volcanologists term this quieter spell of volcanic activity a "paused" phase. It is typical for a volcano like this to have several pauses as part of its overall eruption phase and it is only when a volcano has been paused for three months will it then be regarded as dormant.
27th: The Atlantic hurricane season could be the busiest since 2005, when Katrina and Rita caused massive destruction along the same part of the Gulf Coast now struggling with the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The 2010 season may spawn as many as 23 named tropical storms, including up to seven major hurricanes, a number not likely to be affected by the spill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted. Eight to 14 storms would strengthen into hurricanes, with top winds of 74 mph or higher, the agency said. Three to seven of those could become major storms that reach Category 3 or higher - meaning they bring sustained winds of at least 111 mph.
27th: A severe heat wave has hit India with temperatures reaching nearly 50C. Jalgaon in Maharashtra state recorded 49C. Media reports say a number of people had died of heat stroke in Maharashtra and Orissa, among other states. Many others have been admitted to hospitals. Officials in the Indian Meteorological Department say it will "take some time" for the heat wave to subside. Doctors said people were falling sick because of the heat. In Delhi temperatures have soared to 45.2C, the highest in four years. In neighbouring Haryana, schools were shut down as temperatures rose to nearly 48C in the town of Hissar. Amritsar in Punjab recorded 47C - the highest temperature ever recorded in the district is 47.7C in May 1978.
30th: The first named storm of the 2010 Pacific hurricane season, Agatha, slammed into Guatemala, dumping more than 1 metre of rain in the mountainous west of the country and in neighboring El Salvador, and sparking worries about damage to the coffee crop in both countries. At least 123 people had died in Guatemala, and 59 others were missing, according to the government. Nine people were killed in El Salvador and 14 in Honduras, including a woman who was electrocuted as she was helped from her flooded home. Some coffee trees are at risk of a destructive fungus in the wake of Agatha but mudslides and collapsed bridges made it hard to assess the damage, growers said.
31st: Up to 40,000 people may be forcibly evacuated after torrential rains caused heavy flooding in the southern Philippines. Ten villages in the town of Sultan Kudarat on southern Mindanao island were under waist-deep waters after a river overflowed its banks due to rains that began on Friday.
31st: President Barack Obama's Memorial Day observance was stopped in its tracks on by a torrential downpour accompanied by bolts of lightning and booming thunder. Obama thrilled the crowd at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery by appearing under an umbrella as the rain poured down. But he did not deliver his prepared remarks honoring troops who died fighting for the United States. Instead he urged the crowd to seek shelter.
31st: Firefighters in Canada are battling more than 50 forest fires that have sparked smog alerts across Quebec and parts of the north-eastern US. At least eight of the blazes north of Montreal were out of control, Quebec's forest fire protection unit said. Smoke moved over Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the US, with the city of Boston covered in a haze on Monday.

World weather news, April 2010

2nd: At least 20 people have been killed in central Peru after heavy rains sparked a mudslide that engulfed a small village. The mudslide struck the village in the Huanuco region. At least another 25 people are reportedly missing. At least 120 homes had been damaged or destroyed. The deadly mudslide was the second in as many days in Peru. On Thursday, five people were killed in the town of Cancejos.
4th: Scotland's ski resorts are enjoying one of their busiest Easter seasons on record and - weather permitting - some centres could stay open into May.
7th: Rains began pelting Rio de Janeiro again early Wednesday, hours after the heaviest deluge on record sent killer mudslides cascading down hillsides and turned streets into raging torrents in Brazil's second-biggest city. Authorities feared the added water could dislodge more saturated ground and raise the death toll from 95 in Rio and the neighbouring city of Niteroi. Most of the deaths came when landslides smashed over shacks in slums built precariously on steep slopes. Rio ground to a near halt as Mayor Eduardo Paes urged workers to stay home and ordered all schools closed. Most businesses were closed. 28cm of rain drenched Rio in less than 24 hours on the 6th, and the forecast called for more rain through the weekend, though it was expected to lessen.
7th: New York and the northeastern United States bathed in a record heat wave, as East Coast residents finally put behind them weeks of bad weather including spring storms and deep winter snows. New York saw temperatures of 90F, pipping the 89F record for April 7 set back in 1929, the National Weather Service said. Boston, Massachusetts, was also enjoying 90F weather, easily besting a previous record for the day set in 1991, the weather service said - and the earliest date such a temperatuyre has ever been recorded. Dulles international airport in Virginia, which serves the capital Washington, also saw the mercury soar to 91F, just short of the record of 92F. igh temperatures have brought blossoms and early flowers to city parks in the region that spent much of recent weeks mopping up after huge floods or crippling snow storms.
8th: As of early April, the Caribbean countries of Guyana, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Barbados were in the midst of a record drought. The drought began in October 2009, typically the region's wettest month of the year. Each of these countries recorded their lowest October through March rainfall totals since records began, according to the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology. In Barbados, as of April 8th, there were more than 1,000 brush fires for the year-to-date, compared with 361 during the same period in 2009. In Cuba, a prolonged drought that began at the end of 2008 led local authorities to urge residients to conserve water as reservoir levels shrank. According to the Cuban Civil Defense Agency, 2009 was one of the four driest years in the country since 1900.
12th: Rescuers pulled more bodies from a collapsed hillside slum near Rio de Janeiro on Friday, abandoning hope of finding survivors from a mudslide that buried more than 100 people after the heaviest rains in four decades. The rains that started on Monday have killed at least 205 people, most in mudslides that devastated poor hillside communities, and left thousands homeless in and around Brazil's second-biggest city.
13th: In West Bengal state, 250,000 people were made homeless by a tornado, which packed winds of up to 120 kilometres (75 miles) an hour as it tore across isolated rural areas of northeast India and Bangladesh overnight Tuesday. Uprooted trees blocking roads and broken electricity lines slowed attempts to deliver shelter and food, with officials admitting that frustration was growing among the destitute. Indian state officials said a total of 129 people had been killed, in West Bengal, Bihar state and northeastern Meghalaya. Two others lost their lives in neighbouring Bangladesh. In Rampur village, 320km north of Kolkata, the roof of every house had collapsed or been blown away. Thousands of stranded people were taking shelter in schools and temples.
14th: Moderate to severe drought conditions were present over parts of the southern, southwestern, and middle areas of China. In the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, an area that has experienced ongoing drought conditions for several months, pine caterpillars have been destroying the local pine forests. According to an official, over 2,300 hectares have been seriously damaged by these pests this year-to-date, nearly eight times the area compared with the previous year. The official noted that the drought weakened the trees' ability to resist the caterpillars and that the heat and dryness created ideal conditions for more rapid pest reproduction.
14th: A volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed black smoke and white steam into the air and partly melted a glacier, setting off a major flood that threatened to damage roads and bridges. The plume was seen rising from a crater under about 200m of ice at the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, close to the site of another eruption which started last month and died down only on Monday. The Icelandic Civil Defense Authority ordered 700 people to evacuate their homes and said melting ice from the glacier had caused big floods that threatened to damage a highway and several bridges. In March, another volcano erupted near the Eyjafjallajokull glacier but caused no casualties.
16th: The world's combined global land and ocean surface temperature made last month the warmest March on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Taken separately, average ocean temperatures were the warmest for any March and the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record. Additionally, the planet has seen the fourth warmest January - March period on record.
18th: The Indian Capital continued to reel under heat wave conditions with the mercury again soaring to 43.0C on Sunday, which is 7C above normal. The minimum temperature too remained 10C above normal at 30.6C. Worse still, the weather department has forecast that the m aximum temperature will settle at around 44C on Monday. Like the other parts of North India, Delhi is battling heat wave conditions and is expected to remain very hot for the next week or so. The humidity levels were, however, low in the city at a maximum of 50 per cent and minimum of 14 per cent. The all-time high recorded for April in Delhi was in 1941 when the mercury touched 45.6C on April 29. Delhi had remained hot even last month and had experienced the second warmest March since 1901.
20th: Despite signs that the Eyjafjallaj�kull volcano is calming, the European Meteorological Offices remain on full alert to monitor the atmospheric conditions. Conditions are changing with volcanic ash now being thrown up to a height of only 3 to 4 kilometres, compared to 6 to 7 kilometres earlier. The advent of a low air pressure system over Iceland in the next three days is expected to move the volcanic ash towards the Arctic, while the accompanying rains could wash down the ash at lower heights.
21st: Flights have landed at a number of UK airports for the first time in six days following the lifting of restrictions caused by a volcanic ash cloud. The Civil Aviation Authority allowed a phased reopening of airspace after a reassessment of the risk to aircraft. It said its safety tests showed that plane engines had "increased tolerance levels in low ash density areas".
22nd: A dust storm has provided some relief from the three day heat wave blighting northern and eastern India. Starting in Rajasthan the dust storm, spread to the whole of the northern region during the day, bringing down temperatures. Daytime temperatures are likely to fall by 1-3C over the next few days thanks to the haze of dust sweeping the region. Temperatures are below 40C in most parts. However, while the dust shields the ground from the sun during the day, heat radiation at night is reduced, leading to high overnight temperatures. The maximum temperature in Jaipur fell to 39.6C on Thursday. However, the minimum temperature continues to be 31.9C which is still higher than usual for the time of year.
23rd: A forecast of near-normal summer monsoon rainfall was released by the India Meteorology Department (IMD). The forecast cites five variables related to the state of sea and atmosphere during the first three months of 2010. Important is the ongoing state of ENSO (weakening El Nino) and the forecast of neutral (and possibly La Nina) SOI in time for the SW Monsoon (June to September). Another factor, cited in a mid-April press release, is that drought years rarely happen back-to-back, and the deficient SW Monsoon of 2009 qualifies it as a drought year. The actual forecast is for rainfall to be 98% of the long-period average for India.
25th: A choking sandstorm and heavy snow have severed a vital air link to the remote quake-hit Chinese county of Yushu, severely affecting relief efforts. An earthquake earlier this month in Yushu, high on the Tibetan plateau in western Qinghai province, killed more than 2,000 people and left thousands of others homeless in freezing temperatures. Yushu's airport, only opened last year, has been an important part of the rescue mission following the quake, enabling aid workers and supplies to bypass the 800 km road trip from provincial capital Xining, and helping in evacuations of the injured. But heavy snow has closed that airport, and a sandstorm sweeping across northwest China has closed Xining airport.
26th: A dramatic flip from severe, even record-setting, cold to unusual warmth has happened over that part of western Asia centered upon the west of Siberian Russia. The best illustration of this marked shift that has unfolded since the dead of winter may be found in the plains between Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg. The city of Omsk suffered an extreme, harsh winter. The coldest month, January, was below normal by 6.8C. But the cold broke in March and, in mid-April, unusual warmth blossomed over a vast swath at the heart of Eurasia. In Omsk, this warming culminated on the 27th in a high of 30.0C, a hot day even in July. For April as a whole, the mean temperature as of Tuesday rose 5.7C above normal.
27th: A late-season snowstorm battered northern parts of New England with over 30cm of snow across Vermont. Heavy snow fell during much of Tuesday in an area from New York to Maine, causing localised travel chaos and power outages. North Underhill, Vermont topped the snowfall totals with 34cm. With temperatures around freezing, the snow is heavy and wet in nature, breaking tree limbs and downing power cables. The snowstorm was the back end of an intense low pressure system that spread east across the central Plains last week, producing severe tornadic thunderstorms that caused huge damage and killed at least 12 people in the deep south.
28th: The National Weather Service has confirmed that a single monster tornado is to blame for 10 deaths over the weekend in Mississippi. It was initially unclear if a single massive twister, or multiple smaller ones, caused the deaths and damaged about 700 homes in the state. The state's chief Weather Service meteorologist, Alan Gerard, said that the tornado followed a nearly 150-mile track from Tallulah, La., through Mississippi, before dissipating in Oktibbeha County in northeastern part of the state. Gerard said the tornado was unusually large - measuring 1.75 miles wide. That's a record for Mississippi. The storm system went on to Alabama, where it spawned more tornados, and is blamed for two other deaths.
20th: Victoria's (Australia) mean temperature during the 12 months to the end of April was 15.36C, passing the previous record of 15.25C set between February 2007 and January 2008. Likewise, Tasmania recorded a mean temperature from May 2009 to April 2010 of 11.43C, passing its previous record of 11.34C set between May 1988 and April 1989. Temperatures have been consistently above average throughout the 12 month period. Victoria was warmer than normal in all 12 months, while Tasmania recorded above average temperatures in all but one month, October being the exception. November 2009 was exceptionally warm in both states. In Victoria, it was 4.36C above the mean, while in Tasmania it was 2.43C above the mean.

World weather news, March 2010

1st: Many of the more than 1 million Northeastern (USA) homes and businesses plunged into the dark by a storm were running on electricity Monday, three days after the hard-hitting combination of snow, rain and hurricane-force winds. New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch called restoration efforts "the most rapid" he's ever seen after a storm. On Friday, at the height of the storm, 360,000 residential and business customers were without electricity � more than half the state. By Monday afternoon, the number was about 40,000.
1st: A landslide triggered by torrential rain has buried entire villages and left more than 300 people missing in eastern Uganda, where at least 55 people have been killed. Rescue workers began pulling bodies from the mud after the landslide on Monday evening, while the Ugandan Red Cross reported widespread flooding and damage. The landslide happened after days of torrential rain. Uganda is currently experiencing unusually heavy downpours in the annual rainy season. Local markets were destroyed, schools were forced to close and roads were blocked by heaps of earth that slid from higher ground.
2nd: Heavy rains in the Gulf desert state of the United Arab Emirates caused flooding, traffic jams, car accidents and school closures, after four weather-related deaths at the weekend. Some residents of the emirate of Sharjah were trapped in their homes by high waters. A major thoroughfare, the Dubai-Sharjah sector of the Emirates Road bypass, was closed due to the flooding. A woman also died on Saturday and 13 other people were injured in the collapse of the entrance to the "Global Village" annual shopping fair as heavy wind and rains lashed Dubai.
3rd: Two people have been killed and six injured as giant waves slammed into a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, the ship's owners have said. The 8m high waves hit the Cypriot-owned Louis Majesty off the coast of north-east Spain. A spokesman for owner Louis Cruises said three "abnormally high" waves broke windows in the front of the ship. The Louis Majesty was heading to Genoa on a 12-day Mediterranean cruise but has now returned to Barcelona.
4th: Dozens of ships are stuck in the ice in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden. One of the ships is a ferry boat carrying 900 passengers. Ice-breakers are currently working to free it so it can finish its journey to the Swedish capital Stockholm. Coast guards say the ships ignored ice warnings. Strong winds and freezing temperatures are making it difficult for the ice breakers to free the trapped vessels. As soon as the ice is broken, the water very quickly freezes again. Sweden has suffered an unusually harsh winter this year, with temperatures across the country almost continuously far below freezing since December.
6th: A severe thunderstorm dumped hail the size of golfballs and rain on the eastern Australian city of Melbourne, delaying sporting events, shutting down transportation and forcing the evacuation of a train station when the storm tore a hole in its roof. The Bureau of Meteorology said the storm blanketed roads with hail and brought 25mm of rain in less than an hour. Emergency services could not keep up with reports of flooding and damage. In the city center, water was nearly knee deep in some streets and shopping centres were cleared out.
7th: Heavy snowfall in parts of Germany triggered a deadly avalanche and caused thousands of accidents, leaving at least seven people dead and dozens more injured. Across the southern state of Bavaria, police registered more than 2,000 car accidents over the weekend. Police in the city of Regensburg said 46 cars were damaged in a highway pileup Saturday that left 17 people injured. In the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, three more people died in traffic accidents on icy roads. An avalanche in the Bavarian Alps on Sunday killed a backcountry skier; the avalanche engulfed a group of four at the Grosser Traithen mountain close to the town of Oberaudorf. The region got 40cm of fresh snow over the weekend. Heavy snowfall started on Friday night in parts of Germany, causing hundreds of accidents within hours. Police in western North Rhine-Westfalia said Saturday that 337 accidents had injured at least 45 people.
8th-9th: The dry Pampas of Argentina suffered extreme local rainfall on Monday into Tuesday. Santa Rosa airport observed 192mm of rain, mostly within about eight hours. Needless to say, the cloudburst triggered flooding.
9th: While snowstorms continue to hammer some parts of Europe, Israelis were enjoying a different kind of weather today. The temperature in Tel Aviv soared all the way 35 degrees today, and that had dozens of people flocking to the nearest beach to cool off. It's not the first time this winter there's been a heatwave in Israel, however.
10th: From the balmy Arctic and snowless Western fields to the open water of the St. Lawrence, this winter has been the warmest and driest in Canadian record books, Environment Canada says. Winter 2009/10 was 4C above normal, making it the warmest since nationwide records were first kept in 1948, Environment Canada scientists say. It was also the driest winter on the 63-year record, with precipitation 22% below normal nationally, and down 60% in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario
10th: Authorities say one person was killed in the tornadoes that struck parts of Arkansas in the evening; four people were injured in the tornadoes Wednesday night and three of them had major injuries. The tornadoes and high winds caused damage from the southwest corner of Arkansas to the northeastern part of the state.
10th: This week, parts of Spain and France were hit by very heavy snowfall. Barcelona saw its heaviest snow fall since 1962.
12th: Heavy rain and melting snow have caused severe floods across a region of Kazakhstan neighboring China, flooding villages and killing around two dozen people. Southern Kazakhstan was affected by unusually intense snowfalls this winter and fast-rising temperatures are causing major flooding and mudslides across the region.
13th: Following several winter storms in February, a nor'easter wreaked havoc along the Atlantic seaboard (USA) in mid March. On March 13th, torrential rains and strong winds killed at least 11 people and left approximately 500,000 people without electricity in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. New Jersey's largest utility company stated that the storm was the worst in its history, with 420,000 power outages to customers. This major storm continued to pound the region for three days. States of emergencies were declared in in Massachussetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
15th: Madagascar's disaster officials say at least 36 people have died and more than 38,000 were made homeless by Tropical Storm Hubert. The storm hit the southeast coast of the Indian Ocean island nation on the 10th.
15th: Tourism chiefs in Cumbria are encouraging people to "tweet" online should they spot a blooming daffodil in the Lake District. The daffodils, made famous by William Wordsworth, are more than a month late this year following the cold winter. One of the most famous places to see daffodils in Cumbria is Dora's Field in Rydal near Ambleside. The "Daffs Watch" appeal asks people to use the social networking site Twitter to point to where they are blooming.
13th-16th: Tropical Cyclone Tomas, a category 4 storm at its peak, battered the South Pacific island nation of Fiji. Sustained winds of 132mph, with gusts up to 161mph, tore through northern Lau and Lomaiviti groups and the northern portion of Vanua Lau.the second largest island. A storm surge of 7m was reported as more than 35cm of rain was dumped over some areas. At least one death was blamed on the storm and a state of emergency was declared for the country's northern and eastern regions on March 16th. The first category 5 storm of the season, tropical cyclone Ului, was located to the west of Tomas, moving west with maximum sustained winds of 150mph and gusts up to 184mph. The storm weakened to category 3 status on the 18th and was expected to make landfall in Queensland Australia on March 21st (Source: Bureau of Meteorology).
17th: Major flooding occurred along the Red River in North Dakota (USA). Water levels were expected to crest to 11.6m on March 21st, about 1m below the record-setting 2009 levels, when the worst flooding in the state's history occurred. Snow melt in the area was earlier than expected; the prior week was the earliest on record that average minimum temperatures were above the freezing mark. These temperatures, combined with heavy rainfall, led to the high flood levels. On a positive note, the timing of the flooding.ten to twelve days earlier than in 2009. was expected to help farmers' chances of planting their spring crops as the fields are black, causing them to draw more heat to warm the soils and then dry them through evaporation processes, according to a conservation program specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
18th: A heatwave has built over Arabia and the Indian Subcontinent to Turkey or Central Asia. In March, unusually high pressure has built aloft from Arabia to India leading to the northward shifting of the jet stream between southern Europe and East Asia. Hand-in-hand with the strong high aloft go the early surge of warming and the northward shift of rain-giving weather systems related to the jet stream. Today heating was dramatic over Pakistan and western India. In Karachi, where offshore winds driven by the strong high cancelled the usual sea breeze, the temperature rose to 41.8C. Within Sindh, Chhor reported a high of 44C. Across the line in Gujarat state, India, highs were about 42.5C at Bhuj and Ahmadabad.
19th: Melbourne has recorded its 100th day in a row when the maximum temperature has exceeded 20C. Forecasts suggest the record run may extend into next week, at least. The last time Melbourne recorded a maximum temperature of less than 20C was 8 December 2009. Melbourne.s string of warm days far exceeds the previous record of 78 days, set between 29 December 2000 and 16 March 2001. Records in Melbourne date back to 1855. Melbourne.s record run reflects the very warm conditions that have been experienced across Victoria since the start of last winter. Victoria.s mean temperature for the nine months from June 2009 to February 2010 is 15.3C, the highest on record, and is 1.4C above the 1961-90 average. The previous record of 15.1C was set in 1980.
22nd: Some 100,000 people were left without power after a freak storm battered the Australian city of Perth, hurling golf ball-sized hailstones and causing floods and landslides. Western Australia premier Colin Barnett estimated a damage bill of hundreds of millions of dollars after the wild weather smashed into the city late on Monday, paralysing flights and commuter traffic. Nearly 160,000 homes lost power at the height of the storm, which brought wind gusts over 120km/h and dumped nearly 40mm of rain. About 20 people were evacuated from one hospital's emergency room after the roof collapsed, while a landslip near the city centre crushed two parked cars and filled one apartment with mud. On Sunday, a category two cyclone hit the Great Barrier Reef coastline on Australia's east, ripping trees out of the ground and smashing boats and houses.
24th: The harmattan, a wind that carries dust from the Sahara Desert across West Africa, unexpectedly blew into Nigeria, coating the country with a fine layer of dust and blotting out the sun. The yellow haze from the storm reduced visibility to near zero and caused flight cancellations. According to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, the harmattan typically ends by February. Growing desertification due to rising temperatures is allowing the Sahara to move closer toward Nigeria. The additional dust "adds fuel" to the harmattan winds, said a climatology professor at Osun State University. Changing patterns in the trade winds affect the timimg of the arrival for the rainy and dry seasons - relied upon by farmers for planting crops each year
25th: Come Saturday the 27th, Hobart should have had 100 consecutive days where the temperature reached at least 17C. This is easily the longest run of such mild weather recorded in Hobart, where comparable records extend back to 1895. It is common to have mild weather interrupted by a few cool days, even in summer. 20C is forecast for both Friday and Saturday, and the run of mild weather is forecast to continue into next week. On 17 December 2009, the temperature in Hobart reached only 12.4C. But since then the coldest day has been 17.4C on 27 February 2014 the hottest was 38.3C on New Year's Eve. The previous longest stretch of such mild weather saw 72 consecutive days with the temperature reaching 17C from 7 December 2002 to 16 February 2003. On only 7 occasions in Hobart's climate record have there been 50 consecutive days over 17C - ending in 1900, 1961, 1972, 1979, 2001, 2003 and now 2010. Hobart's average daily maximum temperature from December 2009 to March 2010 so far has been 23.0C, over 2C above the long-term average of 20.9C for those 4 months, and likely to be a record. Tasmania has been dominated by high pressure systems for most of this time.
29th: Emergency food relief is needed for nomadic herders in Mongolia after the number of livestock killed there by blizzards and extreme cold doubled in recent weeks, the Red Cross said. International funds of 1 million Swiss francs were needed to provide food and other emergency relief for herders in the poor, landlocked country. The coldest winter in three decades has badly affected the country, following a summer drought that prevented farmers from stockpiling food for their livestock. Heavy snow and temperatures as low as -40C have affected 19 of Mongolia's 21 provinces.
29th: A tornado touched down during a fierce thunderstorm in the Bahamas and toppled a port crane, killing three people and injuring at least four. The crane collapsed at the Freeport Container Port on the western side of Grand Bahama, where trees were uprooted and windows blasted out of hotels as at least one tornado cut a destructive path on the island.
30th: Rainfall records are being set across the Northeast USA as a storm pounds the region for a second day. By Tuesday afternoon, Providence, R.I., recorded more than 15 inches of rain for the month, becoming the rainiest of any month on record. The previous record for the rainiest month was set in October 2005. Boston set a record for the month of March, topping a mark set in 1953, with nearly 14 inches of rain. It is now the second rainiest month since record-keeping began in 1872. New Jersey and parts of New York City also set March records. Rainfall totals reached record levels in Central Park for March. Monthly rainful approached record levels in Portland, Maine.
31st: Flooding on a scale rarely seen in New England (USA) forced hundreds of people from their homes, overwhelmed sewage systems to the point that families were asked to stop flushing toilets, and washed out bridges and highways from Maine to Connecticut. Hardest hit by three days of record-breaking rain was Rhode Island, where the worst flooding in 200 years could persist for several more days and permanently close businesses already struggling in the weak economy. The flooding caps a month that set rainfall records across the region.

World weather news, February 2010

2nd

Punxsutawney Phil, the celebrated rodent at the center of America's quirky Groundhog Day festivities, saw his shadow, presaging six more weeks of winter. For the annual February 2 ritual, the weather-forecasting groundhog is coaxed or pulled from his burrow, as crowds of onlookers watch to see if his shadow can be discerned. If Phil appears to see his shadow, winter will continue for six weeks. If not, spring starts early.

1st-3rd

A heatwave seems to have locked in over the South American mid-continent with every likelihood that it will hold through at least Saturday. The heat wave set a record for electrical demand in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul (RGS) on Tuesday. On Tuesday, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, topped out 37C, or 99F. And with apparent temperature to at about 44C. The normal high would be 30C. Overnight, the low was about 27C, versus the normal of 21C. The night was even more sultry at Santa Maria, in the heart of RGS. The overnight low here was 29.6C.

5th-6th

A historic blizzard walloped the mid-Atlantic region (USA). Dubbed 'Snowmageddon' by local media, this was the second major snow storm to dump more than 40cm on the region during the 2009/10 winter season. A very large North Atlantic extratropical cyclone created an upper-level low, which helped block the mid-Atlantic snowstorm from moving northward. Colesville, Maryland -a suburb of Washington D.C. - received the most snowfall, with 102cm recorded in the region. Several preliminary all-time records were reported, including a state record of 65.3cm that fell in Wilmington, Delaware, breaking the old record of 63.5cm set in 2003. It was the second snowiest storm in Philadelphia's history, with 72.4cm reported, falling short of the 78.0cm recorded January 7th-8th, 1996. Washington Dulles Airport received 82.3cm, its largest two-day snowfall total on record. The snow was so deep in some areas that bulldozers had to be used in place of traditional snowplows to clear roads. The storm effectively paralyzed a large portion of the mid-Atlantic region. Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland declared state of emergencies. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power; schools, airports, and bus systems closed; and roofs caved in from the weight of the heavy snow.

5th

At least seven people were killed in avalanches in the Alps in the past week. One of the victims was a British serviceman, the others are believed to be Austrians, Germans and Swiss. Most of the avalanches were in Austria, where the levels 3 to 4 now prevailing in the five-lavinvarning scale.

5th

An official in French Polynesia says swelling ocean waters driven by Cyclone Oli have left at least one person dead on the South Pacific archipelago. Waters carried away the 40-year-old man as pounding rain and winds of up to 200km/h lashed the Austral Islands.

5th

A landslide killed at least 11 people in central Mexico on Friday, adding to 18 deaths this week from severe and unseasonable winter storms that closed schools and freeways and flooded thousands of homes.

6th

Mudslides touched off by torrential rains poured down onto upscale neighborhoods in the fire-scarred foothills above Los Angeles on Saturday, damaging dozens of homes and destroying some of them. No deaths or serious injuries were reported, but residents had little or no warning when a wall of mud, rock and debris came crashing down sometime after 4 a.m. PST, carrying off crushed cars and leaving a path of destruction.

8th

At least 150 people have died in floods and avalanches triggered by some of the heaviest rain and snow in Afghanistan for 50 years.

10th

Philadelphia has joined Baltimore and Washington in setting a record for the snowiest winter in history. The National Weather Service said 14 inches of snow was recorded at Philadelphia International Airport as of 7 p.m. Wednesday. That makes a total of 70.3 inches of snow for the season so far. It tops the previous seasonal record of 65.5 inches recorded in 1995-96. Washington DC's winter snowfall total up to Wednesday morning of 54.9in recorded at Reagan National Airport, had made the season the snowiest on record since 1899, the NWS said.

11th

US opponents of climate change action are seizing on a record snowfall in Washington in hopes of killing legislation to curb carbon emissions, which already faced uncertain political prospects. Environmentalists have launched a swift counter-attack, pointing out that Olympics host Vancouver is facing a dearth of snow and saying the extreme weather may in fact offer proof, not a rebuttal, of changing climate patterns. With Washington and other eastern cities digging out from the heaviest snow in decades, conservatives have gone on the offensive and mocked leaders who warned about the planet's heating -- in particular, former vice president Al Gore.

10th-11th

Battered residents across the eastern US seaboard were digging out from record snowfalls Thursday that paralyzed the region, and wearily braced for yet more winter misery on the way. Wednesday's blizzard affected tens of millions of people and has turned the 2009-2010 winter into the snowiest ever on record for Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, snapping air and rail links across much of the region and leaving roads too dangerous to navigate. More than 8,000 homes in Maryland and Virginia remained without power and the federal government was shut down Thursday for the fourth day in a row -- at a cost of an estimated 100 million dollars a day in lost productivity. Thousands of flights were canceled or delayed at regional airports, while strong winds and black ice made driving especially perilous. With snow drifts several feet deep in many parts of the state, heavy lifting equipment and bulldozers were being brought into Maryland to remove the snow as plows were unable to cope. Compare the 79.9 inches of snow Baltimore, Maryland, has received this winter to the 65.2 inches over the past five winters combined.

12th

Dallas, Texas received 28.4cm of snow, demolishing the old record of 18.8cm, set on January 15th-16th, 1964. It also brought Dallas its snowiest winter on record (36.6cm, breaking the previous record of 35.8cm set during the winter of 1977/78). More than 180,000 people lost power in the area. The storm continued to move east, bringing snow to regions of the South that rarely experience this type of event, including Georgia, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle.

12th

The provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou in southern China are reporting moderate to severe drought across much of the region, with extreme drought also covering portions of Yunnan and Sichuan. The region was experiencing its worst drought in more than a half century. Rainfall in Hunan since July 2009 measured about 200mm -a record low amount -while average temperatures were about 2C above normal. Nearly 4.9 million people in southern China lacked drinking water, with many villagers reporting that they had to walk several kilometers to fetch or purchase water in nearby towns.

13th

Flash flooding hit parts of Sydney after the heaviest rainfall in a decade to hit the Australian city in a wild storm that felled trees and caused widespread blackouts. Almost 100mm of rain fell in little more than an hour in some parts of the city, a weather bureau spokesman said, turning streets to rivers and leaving scores of people stranded.

15th

The polar snap enveloping much of the United States has been killing off coral reefs in the normally balmy warm waters off the Florida Keys. The unusually chilly weather so far this year has seen sea temperatures plummet in southern Florida - a fatal development for the coral, which dies when exposed for an extended time to temperatures below 15C. Especially in the lower Keys, "temperatures have been lower... there is higher mortality," Diego Lirman, a University of Miami expert on coral, said. In Miami, the thermometer in January and February regularly dropped below 1.6C, the coldest temperatures since 1970. The Keys have not seen a cold-water bleaching event like this since the winter of 1977-78, when acres of staghorn coral perished.

15th

Snow and ice pelted parts of the South of the USA for the second time in a matter of days, glazing Tennessee highways and reaching into northern Alabama. Snow fell in parts of Alabama; numerous crashes were reported before dawn Monday in the Nashville area. Memphis reported about a half-inch of snow as did Nashville. While traffic was moving well on interstates in the Memphis area, Nashville had ice and icy patches on even the major routes.

18th

An owl is on the loose and the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore will have to delay its season opening because of damage from two heavy snowstorms. Zoo officials say they have at least $1.5 million in losses from historic storms across the Mid-Atlantic. An aviary for Maryland birds was a total loss, the African aviary was heavily damaged and more than 60 trees or large limbs fell. A long-eared owl from the damaged aviary is still on the loose.

19th-21st

Europe as a whole has lately warmed following one of several far-reaching cold snaps to have happened this winter. However, as overall warming proceeded over the continent as a whole, the Russian Arctic (and Finland) waxed bitterly cold. Khosedakhard, which lies in the far-northeast of Europe has been at the heart of this late-week bitter cold. Early on Friday (0600 UTC), the temperature read -55.6C. Wikipedia have that the lowest on record in Europe was -58.1C at Ust`Shchugor, Russia, which lies west of the Ural Mountains and a few hundred kilometres farther south. Meanwhile, another cold spot on Friday would be Petrun, Russia, with -52.3C. The city of Vorkuta was as cold as -49.4C. In Finland, the low on Sunday morning was -40.1C at Pudasjarvi.

21st

Rescue workers in Madeira dug through heaps of mud, boulders and debris Sunday, searching for victims buried by floods and mudslides that have killed at least 42 people on the popular Portuguese island. More than 120 other people were injured and an unknown number were missing, possibly swept away or smothered. The worst storm to hit Madeira since 1993 lashed the south of the Atlantic Ocean island, including the capital, Funchal, on Saturday, turning some streets into torrents of mud, water and rolling debris. The flash floods were so powerful they carved paths down mountains and ripped through the city, churning under some bridges and tearing others down. Residents caught in the torrent clung to railings to avoid being swept away. Cars were tossed about by the force of the water; the battered shells of overturned vehicles littered the streets. According to the Institute for Meteorology of Portugal:

A strong frontal activity associated with depression affected the archipelago, on 20 February. The mass of hot air in the circulation of this frontal system, characterized by instability and high content of water vapor rise, coupled with the topography of the island precipitation.
132mm was recorded in 12 hours (from 04:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC), with the greatest 60-minute fall being 52mm observed between 09:00 UTC and 10:00 UTC. There were also falls of 92mm in 3 hours (from 09:00 UTC to 11:00 UTC) and 117mm in 6 hours (from 07:00 UTC to 13:00 UTC).
The period from 1 October 2009 to February 22, 2010 was characterized by values of precipitation quite high, particularly in the months of December and February. The precipitation in February, for the first 22 days of 426mm corresponds to about 70% of the total annual average.

23rd

Up to 70 people are feared dead after being trapped under piles of mud when a landslide hit a village near the Indonesian city of Bandung. Heavy rain forced rescue efforts to stop for the night but they resumed after lifting equipment arrived.

24th

Two climbers swept away by an avalanche in the Highlands have died, police have confirmed. The bodies of two men were recovered by a mountain rescue team from the Buchaille Etive Mor area of Glencoe.

25th

Snowy conditions in some areas of Northern Ireland has led to a number of school closures. Motorists have been advised to take extra care on the roads, as snow and slush made conditions treacherous.

25th

The latest winter storm battering the Eastern USA has given Pittsburgh its snowiest month on record. The National Weather Service says that by early Thursday afternoon the city measured 40.4 inches for February. That beats the 1978 record of 40.2 inches. Records have been kept since 1884.

25th

The National Weather Service has reduced its snowfall projections a bit across the Northeast. Forecasters say the snow that started Thursday morning will continue to fall into Friday. But National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Heavener says the snow is so wet that it won't pile up as much as earlier thought. He says usually, there's about 10 inches of snow for every inch of moisture. But with this snow, it will be more like 7 or 8 inches for every inch of moisture. A stretch from Philadelphia to Albany, N.Y., was previously projected to get 12 to 18 inches of fresh snow. The area now appears to be in line for 8 to 18 inches, with a slightly smaller band getting the highest amounts.

25th

Madeira is battening down the hatches ahead of a vicious storm due to hit the island on Friday. The heaviest of the rain will track north of Madeira before heading northeast to target Portugal and Spain by Saturday. The storm is the second this week driven toward Madeira on the jet-stream. The jet-stream has remained over Madeira and the Mediterranean this winter, bringing wet and windy weather much further south than usual. As Madeira is a volcanic and mountainous island large volumes of rainfall runoff poses a significant problem. Rain is channelled down rain channels called levada's. The levada's quickly become overwhelmed by the volume of water as seen on Saturday. With the cleanup operation underway, the storm on Friday could hamper progress, if not compound the beleaguered islands problems.

25th

More than 80 motorists were stuck overnight in Aberdeenshire as heavy snow continued to affect large parts of Scotland. The drivers became stranded east of Macduff and on the A96 between Keith and Fochabers. Numerous roads in Aberdeenshire are closed and more than 100 schools in the Grampian area are shut, along with dozens in the Highlands. Sections of three trunk roads - A9, A82 and A96 - have been closed by snow. Auchterarder in Perthshire has had two feet of snow and many roads are affected in Perth and Kinross. Police are advising drivers not to travel unless necessary. In Aberdeen there are also problems with flooding on city routes as snow turns to rain. A total of 112 schools in Aberdeenshire have been closed, along with nine in Moray and some in Aberdeen. Almost 90 schools in the Highlands announced they were closing. And almost 70 schools have been shut in Tayside and Central Scotland. Ferry sailings between Stornoway and Ullapool have also been cancelled because of the bad weather. CairnGorm Mountain ski resort was closed. On its website, staff said the centre was "storm-bound".

26th

By Monday morning (1 March 2010) Western Australia is almost certain to have sweltered through its hottest summer on record. According to the Bureau of Meteorology the average of all the minimum and maximum temperatures recorded across the state this summer is likely to be 29.6C; 0.2C above the previous hottest summer, recorded in 1997-98, and 1.3C above the long-term summer average of 28.3C. Perth, where temperature records date back to 1897, has also experienced an unusually hot and dry summer. With only three days to go, it is very likely that the summer of 2009-10 will be the city's second hottest, as well as its driest, summer on record.

27th

Haitian officials say eight people are dead and two missing after heavy rain pounded the southwest and caused widespread flooding. Rain fell around Les Cayes on the country's southern peninsula. The civil protection department says a prison flooded and more than 400 prisoners were evacuated.

28th

During February the US would expect to see an average of 22 tornadoes hitting the ground. Despite 2010 being an El Nino year, which raises the risk of tornadoes forming, none were seen. Tornadoes form in the US when cold air over the northwest collides with warm tropical air coming in from the southeast and Gulf of Mexico. With the jet stream blocking the warm air pushing north, the residents of the Great Plains have had a quiet month.

28th

A section of the outer wall of Rochester Castle (Kent, UK) has collapsed after heavy rainfall. Staff discovered the crumbled bailey wall, which surrounds the Kent castle's medieval walls, when they arrived for work on Monday.

27th-1st

Rescue workers in dinghies cruised flooded streets on France's Atlantic coast, searching for people still trapped in their homes by storms that smashed through concrete sea walls and killed at least 62 people across Western Europe. The storm, called Xynthia, blew into France early Sunday with hurricane-force winds, flooding ports, destroying homes and leaving 1 million households without electricity. It also battered Belgium, Portugal, Spain and parts of Germany and snarled train and air travel throughout the continent. Floodwaters submerged streets in L'Ile de Re, a chic resort island of colorful ports, charming cottages and bike paths. Broken-off concrete blocks from a shattered sea wall lay strewn about one of the island's beaches. France's railways had major delays, and cancellations continued Monday at Frankfurt airport � one of Europe's most important hubs. One official noted just how old some French sea walls were. "The sea wall that broke dated from (the era) of Napoleon," Philippe de Villiers, a politician who heads the regional government in Vendee, said. In Portugal's Azores islands, a mudslide swept a school bus off a road and into a ravine, killing the driver and sending two children, aged 10 and 12, to hospital. A 10-year-old girl, the bus's only other passenger, was missing, officials said. In Portugal the strongest wind gust recorded was 166km/h. In France a wind gust of 149km/h was recorded whereas in Galiza, Cantabria and Asturias (northwestern and northern Spain) wind gusts in excess of 100km/h were recorded. The strongest wind gust associated with the storm was 228km/h recorded in Orduna in the Basque Country of Spain on the 27th at 8pm local time.

28th

Rainfall accumulations for December, January and now February have all far outstripped the mean monthly rainfall in Gibraltar, February by over 500%. Winter 2009-2010 has now set a new record for the wettest winter ( records began in 1947 ). From the beginning of December 2009 to 09Z on 24 February, Gibraltar has accumulated 1366.8mm. The previous wettest was the winter of 1962-1963 which saw 931.6mm.

World weather news, January 2010

1st

Mudslides and flooding killed at least 44 people in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state and authorities said that the death toll could climb with more heavy rains in the forecast. On the 31st a heavy downpour that triggered mudslides and floods killed as many as 19 people across Rio state, Brazil's third most populous.

3rd

A double avalanche has killed three people, including at least one rescuer, in the Diemtigtal valley about 40km south of the Swiss capital Bern. The dead rescuer was a doctor who had been trying with others to help a group of skiers hit by the first avalanche when the second occurred. A separate avalanche on Sunday killed a man in Switzerland's Valais canton. The start of the ski season and heavy snowfall in recent days have prompted officials to warn of a heightened avalanche risk in the Swiss Alps.

4th

Australian authorities declared a natural disaster over flood-stricken areas, but rains submerging large swathes of New South Wales state could be a boon for crop exports after a crippling drought. Days of heavy rains in outback New South Wales state over New Year have swollen rivers and left hundreds of rural properties cut off by floodwaters, with more than 1,200 people evacuated. The damage bill from the flooding is expected to run into millions of dollars in Australia's most powerful state, home to a third of the 21 million population and a A$320 billion economy accounting for a third of national GDP. A wet depression, which started as a powerful cyclone off the west Australia coast and travelled across the outback over Christmas, has flooded dry rivers and turned dust bowl paddocks to mud in the New South Wales state wheat belt.

4th

Heavy snows and biting cold hit parts of Asia, with unusually harsh winter weather snarling up transport across north China, South Korea and India. As the cold snap pressed east, swathes of the Korean peninsula were also hit by heavy snow, choking up the rush hour commute in Seoul, where the main domestic airport, Gimpo, canceled all domestic flights. Dozens of people were also reported to have died after the cold snap swept over northern India at the weekend. Beijing has become used to milder, largely snow-free winters in recent decades. The snow over the weekend was the capital's biggest since 1951, with falls of up to 20cm in the city's far north near the Great Wall. Beijing is likely to shiver at about minus 10 degrees Celsius in daytime and colder at night, touching decades-old records. The accumulation in Seoul broke a one-day record of 25.6cm and is expected to grow. A heavy blanket of fog in New Delhi over the last few days forced airport authorities to cancel or delay dozens of flights from the capital. Train services were also disrupted.

3rd-6th

Low temperatures in Nepal, northern India, and northern Bangladesh were blamed on the deaths of at least 166 people. Temperatures dropped to -1C for several nights in the region, with daily mean temperatures 6-10C below normal. 10cm of snow was reported in Himachai Pradesh, India on the 3rd.

4th

Seoul residents slogged through the heaviest snowfall in modern Korean history after a winter storm dumped more than 28cm on Monday, forcing airports to cancel flights and paralyzing traffic in South Korea's bustling capital. The snowfall, which continued through Monday afternoon, was the heaviest in a single day since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937. Gimpo International Airport in western Seoul cancelled 224 flights before resuming service Monday afternoon when the snowfall stopped. Beijing also was digging out Monday from a weekend winter storm. More than 7.5cm of snow accumulated in the city centre on Sunday, according to China's National Meteorological Center. State media called it the highest snowfall in the capital in a single day in January since 1951. Upward of 20cm was recorded in the suburbs of Changping near the Great Wall of China. More than 300,000 people were assigned to clear snow in the capital with shovels, scrapers and brooms. Heavy snow also blanketed Sapporo on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, forcing the main airport to cancell nearly 80 flights since last Wednesday.

6th

Cities across eastern and central China are rationing power for industry and urging residents to limit gas use after a wave of icy weather sent energy demand soaring while straining supplies of coal that were already tight. Much of China's manufacturing and farming heartland shivered on Wednesday under snow, sleet and unusual cold that drove south after dumping big snowfalls on Beijing and much of the country's north in past days. Daytime temperatures in Shanghai and across the nearby coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang were close to 0C.

7th

People across Britain dug out Thursday after some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades, as forecasters warned the cold snap brought by an Arctic weather system would continue through next week. The storm shut airport runways, closed roads and led to train delays across the country, with the worst-hit areas receiving 50cm of snow. About 4,000 people were without electricity in southern England, and drivers faced difficult journeys on icy roads. Major airports including London's Heathrow and Gatwick were open, but hundreds of flights were cancelled due to snow and ice. At least two people were killed in road accidents, and a man's body was found under the ice of a frozen pond at a country club in Frimley Green, southwest of London. Many rail services were delayed or cancelled, and a Eurostar train from Brussels to London was stuck for two hours in the Channel Tunnel because of a technical problem. Several thousand schools remained closed across Britain, from Scotland to southern England. The Met Office said Britain was experiencing its longest cold snap since 1981. The temperature fell to -18C overnight in the village of Benson.

7th

Heavy rainfall the first week on January in the Rift Valley province of Kenya has left 32 people dead and 30,000 people homeless and in dire need of food aid. Significant damage to crops and livestock were also reported. The flooding heightened concerns of a cholera outbreak in the Turkana district, which was hard hit by the illness in December. The year 2009 brought record drought to parts of Kenya, devastating crops and wild life populations. The heavy rainfall is expected to alleviate a significant portion of the drought across the country.

10th

Snow and icy weather disrupted travel across Europe, closing Geneva airport on one of its busiest tourist weekends of the year and prompting a state of emergency on part of Germany's Baltic coast. Thousands of passengers were stranded at Geneva's Cointrin airport after heavy overnight snow kept it closed until noon. "It was the first time we had so much snow on the runway since 1985," airport spokesman Bertrand Staempfli said on French-language Swiss radio at midday as departures began. Hundreds of motorists had to abandon their cars in the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where a foot of snow fell and the district of Ostvorpommern declared a state of emergency. Levees in parts of the neighboring state of Schleswig-Holstein showed cracks on Sunday, threatening low-lying areas with floods; coastal towns like Flensburg and Travemuende had suffered flooding by afternoon. In Poland, at least 200,000 households suffered a power cut and shoppers and workers were evacuated from a shopping center in the western city of Leszno when its roof began to give way under 1.5m of snow. A police spokesman said that since the onset of cold weather in October, 152 people had been found frozen to death in Poland. On Germany's Baltic island of Fehmarn, some 5,000 residents were shut in by the blizzards, while scores were trapped in their cars for hours on the A20 autobahn because normal snow ploughs could not reach them. German national rail operator Deutsche Bahn said several passenger trains became stuck in snowdrifts and a number of local rail routes in the north were cancelled. Ninety-one flights were cancelled on Sunday at Frankfurt airport, Germany's busiest, compared to 225 the day before. In Britain, chemical firm Ineos said it had diverted 12,000 metric tones of salt for use on British roads that had originally been destined for Germany.

11th

Florida awoke on Monday to another day of bone-chilling temperatures after days of Arctic air that have kept the southern United States -- including the usually balmy Sunshine State - in a deep freeze. In Miami, the thermometer dropped over the weekend to 1.6C, the coldest since 1970. The cold wave has wreaked havoc with Florida's 9.3-billion-dollar-a-year citrus industry and threatened regional agriculture elsewhere as well, including Louisiana's sugar cane crop. South of Miami, the National Weather Service (NWS) early Monday reported a record low temperature in Key West, Florida of 5.6C - the lowest temperature in 40 years.

12th

Residents of Melbourne sweltered through the warmest night in more than a century as warm winds swept the city in Australia's southeast, straining air conditioners and sending crowds to area beaches for relief. Temperatures in Melbourne rose to 43.6C, remaining above 30C throughout the night. The overnight low of 30.6C matched the previous record for Melbourne's warmest night set on 1 February 1902. Electricity demand in Victoria rose to a peak of 10,105 megawatts at 5 pm on Monday, compared with average summer peaks of about 6,500, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator, a grouping of energy industry bodies. A record peak of 10,494 megawatts was set on January 29 last year. Metro Trains, which operates Melbourne's suburban rail network, reported power failures and cancellations on 12 of its 17 lines early Tuesday. The operator cancelled more than 140 services on Monday.

13th

Central Florida citrus groves warmed up although some northern farms still face the threat of a cold snap later on Wednesday, forecasters said. The National Weather Service in Tampa, Florida, said in a bulletin that temperatures should fall quickly after sunset "dropping below freezing by midnight." It said temperatures will "bottom out between 24 and 29 degrees Fahrenheit away from the coast, with a large portion of northern Levy County seeing 3 or 4 hours of temperatures at or below 27F." Citrus plants sustain damage when temperatures fall to 28 degrees or below for 4 hours or longer.

14th

The cold wave now affecting the northern hemisphere is a meteorological phenomenon caused by the large-scale blocking of atmospheric circulation on a major North-South corridor. The phenomenon is well known by meteorologists and is generally linked with atmospheric oscillations, such as the Arctic oscillation, which has been relatively powerful since mid-December 2009. The blocking episode is nearing its end, and the northern hemisphere winter is now reverting to its normal features from the West and South in Western Europe. Some severe episodes will no doubt linger in several regions of the world and during certain periods of the winter season, which is quite normal.

19th

The first spell of wintry weather struck northwestern Turkey. Cold windswept rain Monday night yielded to wet snow on Tuesday. The temperature slipped to near freezing during the afternoon. Elsewhere in the northwest, snowfall was 13cm at Edirne and 5cm at Tekirdag. However, amounts were much higher in Bulgaria with nearly 30cm on the Black Sea at Varna.

20th

Three more Egyptians died in flooding in the southern Sinai Desert, bringing the toll for three days of unseasonably heavy rains to 10. The arid region is unused to heavy rains which cause flash floods that can destroy homes and carry off livestock. Heavy wind and rains swept through parts of Egypt, Israel and Jordan on Monday, sweeping away homes, knocking out power lines and cutting roads. One motorist died in Israel and 10 died in Egypt, including a British tourist whose boat capsized as he was sailing along the Nile in southern Egypt.

21st

A dense fog and severe cold continue to grip northern India, causing major disruptions to air and rail traffic. At least 170 flights have been affected since Tuesday night when thick fog descended on the capital, Delhi. Hundreds of trains have been delayed. Road traffic in the city is crawling with visibility reduced to less than 50m in many places. More than 450 people have died from the cold, with most deaths reported from the northern Uttar Pradesh state.

21st

Rains have unleashed heavy flooding in parts of the Mexican border city of Tijuana, killing a 5-year-old girl and leaving at least 10 other people missing. Storms also caused a plane to skid off the runway in the Tijuana International Airport. Nobody was hurt. Four days of storms have swelled the Rio Tijuana, which reaches the United States, sending torrents of water into some neighborhoods of the city across the border from San Diego.

21st

Torrential rain and strong winds pummeled California for a fourth consecutive day as officials warned of tornados, flash floods and mudslides in areas ravaged by last year's wildfires. Around 800 homes in hilly suburbs surrounding the Los Angeles area have been issued evacuation orders as the fourth storm to hit the region this week arrived, causing power outages and transport chaos.

17th-23rd

A series of intense extratropical cyclones affected the west coast and southwest region of the United States. Rainfall amounts over 300mm and snow accumulations over 120cm were reported across the higher terrain in the region. The heavy rainfall and wind prompted around 800 mandatory evacuation orders in Southern California due to a fear of landslides. Severe thunderstorms were also present with these weather systems, with seven tornadoes being reported in California. The third and last storm of the series broke numerous records across the West, including all-time record low pressures over roughly 10-15 percent of the United States. Some of the most notable cities setting record low pressures included: Los Angeles, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.

Low pressure records:

Location         Date    Pressure      Previous Date
Medford OR       Jan. 20 28.88"/978 mb 28.93"   Dec. 12, 1995
Eureka CA        Jan. 20 28.90"/979 mb 28.91"   Feb. 1891
Los Angeles CA   Jan. 21 29.20"/989 mb 29.25"   Jan. 17, 1988
Las Vegas NV     Jan. 21 29.13"/986 mb 29.17"   Dec. 1949
San Diego CA     Jan. 21 29.15"/987 mb 29.37"   Mar. 3, 1983 

Note: The pressure at Los Angeles continued to fall, reaching 29.07"/985 mb at 1 pm PST today.

18th

A rare summer snowfall occurred in the town of Bombala, New South Wales, Australia. The town received a light dusting of accumulation, marking the first summer snow in the high terrain of southeast Australia since records began in 1965. The town has an elevation of around 900m above sea-level. Forecasters said that snow at such low levels is unusual at any time of year, especially summer.

22nd

According to a recent review and evaluation conducted by a panel of experts in charge of global weather and climate extremes within the WMO Commission for Climatology, the new record wind gust, not related to tornados, registered to date is 408km/h. This record occurred during Tropical Cyclone Olivia on 10 April 1996 on Barrow Island, Australia. The previous record was of 372km/h, registered in April 1934 across the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire (USA).

24th

Up to 3,000 homes have been destroyed following heavy rains in Peru. The Peruvian authorities have airlifted some people to safety but many people are still waiting. Flood water has closed roads and railway lines. Hundreds of tourists visiting the Inca site of Machu Picchu have been left stranded. Initially, some 2,000 tourists were reported stranded after train service stopped.

26th

A severe cold snap across Central and Eastern Europe has killed dozens of people in recent days. Parts of western Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania have been hit by heavy snowfall and freezing conditions, stranding villages and causing transport chaos. Some 22 people have died in Romania, where snowdrifts blocked roads and temperatures fell as low as -34C. Eleven people died over the weekend in Poland, taking the country's winter death toll past 200. More than 200 flights from Europe's third-largest airport at Frankfurt were cancelled on Monday. In Bulgaria, emergency workers have been struggling through 13-ft (4m) snowdrifts to deliver supplies to stranded villages.

26th

The United Nations has warned that extreme winter weather has killed more than a million livestock in Mongolia. The organisation said this was likely to harm the country's food supply and worsen poverty. It said 19 of Mongolia's 21 provinces had been hit by heavy winter snow and -40C temperatures. Mongolia suffered a severe drought during the summer months, which prevented the stockpiling of food for livestock.

28th

A powerful storm dumped snow, sleet and freezing rain on the southern Plains (USA), disrupting power to thousands of homes and businesses, cancelling flights and shutting down major highways across three states. Ice accumulations of more than one-half inch and high winds snapped electrical lines across Oklahoma, knocking out electrical power to tens of thousands of customers. Airlines canceled more than 100 flights at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City over concerns about icing on aircraft. In parts of West Texas, heavy snow and freezing precipitation downed tree limbs and power lines. The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said up to 12 inches of snow is likely in northwestern Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Panhandle. Freezing rain and sleet was forecast to turn to snow in central Oklahoma.

29th-30th

Heavy snow and high winds have caused traffic chaos across Germany with at least three deaths reported nationwide. Conditions closed some motorways and caused long traffic jams on many others. North Rhine-Westphalia, which includes the cities of Cologne and Dusseldorf, recorded 300 accidents on Friday night and Saturday morning. Public transport in some areas has been shut down and police have advised people not to travel if possible. The traffic chaos in North Rhine-Westphalia led to one death and 40 more people injured, while in Bavaria another two people were killed on frozen roads. Flights at some airports were cancelled or delayed. Bus services in the northern city of Rostock were suspended and sports fixtures cancelled after 30cm of snow fell in one night. In Hamburg hundreds of families skated across the frozen Alster Lake, which forecasters said was a once in a decade phenomenon.

31st

Stockholm has not had a day with above 0Cs throughout January. This has not happened one month of January since 1829 and regarded as sensational by SMHI. Sweden in general has had the coldest January since 1987. In Vaxjo this winter had the longest continuous period of below 0c temperatures since 1947. G�vle with -30C had the lowest temperature since 1963 and Malmsl�tt with -29C the lowest since 1966. Some Baltic provinces have not reported as much snow now for approximately 25 years.

31st

For the first time since 1997 the monthly average temperature in De Bilt was below 0C. The average of -0.5C was 2.0C below average. The North east of The Netherlands was colder than the south west. In Eelde the average temperature was -2.0C, in Vlissingen +1.0C.

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

Last updated 24 January 2011.