Tag Archives: Extreme Weather

Heavy rains spur flash flooding in South, more rain on the way

Portions of three states were under flash flood warnings on Wednesday afternoon as a slow-moving storm brought more heavy rain and damage to the already-waterlogged South.

The National Weather Service issued the warnings for select counties in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, indicating that flash flooding was already occurring in those regions.

The service also issued flash flood watches for other counties in those three states and portions of six others — Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Mississippi — cautioning that the inches of additional rain in the forecast could spur rapidly rising waters later this week.

The National Weather Service said Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas are still expected to see the worst of the storms, and could receive more than eight inches of additional rain by week’s end.

The service said each of those three states had at least one community where more than five inches of rain fell between Monday and Wednesday morning. That included more than one foot near Minden, Louisiana, which is located about 35 miles east of Bossier City in Webster Parish.

The Webster Parish Sheriff’s Office shared numerous photographs of flooding on its Facebook page, including a stretch of Interstate 20 that had been completely submerged. Another photo showed a stretch of Methodist Camp Road, which runs through Minden, had been washed out.

In Bossier Parish, authorities were calling for a voluntary evacuation in some flood-prone areas as waters of the Red Chute Bayou and Flat River continued to rise, according to a news release.

The severe weather prompted government offices in Webster, Bossier and four other Northern Louisiana parishes to close early on Wednesday, the state’s commissioner of administration said in a news release. Grambling State University and Louisiana Tech also cancelled classes.

The other areas in the flash flood watches were expected to see less rainfall, but multiple inches were possible. Residents of all of the affected states should monitor their local forecasts.

Flash flood watches issued in four Southern states ahead of thunderstorms

Portions of four Southern states are bracing for the possibility of flash flooding later this week.

The National Weather Service on Monday issued flash flood watches for parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana ahead of a series of thunderstorms that is expected to bring anywhere between three and 10 inches of rain to those regions between Tuesday and Thursday.

The flash flood watch states the heaviest rains are expected in eastern Texas, western Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas, increasing the risk of flash flooding in those communities.

The storms are expected to bring lighter precipitation totals across the Great Plains, South and Midwest over the next three days, and National Weather Service forecasts indicate that some parts of Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi could all receive three or more inches of rain.

Residents of all of the affected states are encouraged to monitor their local forecasts.

The service also said there is a slight chance of severe thunderstorms across the Southern Plains tonight, but had yet to issue any watches or warnings for those storms as of 1 p.m. Central time.

The flash flood watches come after California was hit with heavy rains over the weekend.

The National Weather Service’s unofficial totals show more than 10 inches of rain fell in parts of Monterey, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties between Friday morning and Monday morning.

The weekend storms also brought more than two feet of snow and wind gusts that topped 60 mph to some mountainous areas, the service said, including an 88-mph gust near Mount Diablo.

Those topped trees and power lines, knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses.

Utility company PG&E said reported more than 265,000 of its customers in the Bay Area lost power during the storm, though all but 8,700 had their service restored as of Sunday morning.

Radar showed some California communities were receiving additional rain and snow Monday, and the National Weather Service warned that some areas could see another 10 inches of snow.

Aid agencies brace for devastating Mongolian ‘dzud’ this winter

ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) – Global aid agencies are responding to a call for assistance by Mongolia as harsh winter weather raises fears for the safety and livelihoods of the country’s traditional pastoralists, who have already been hit hard by a drought last year.

Dry weather has scorched most of Mongolia’s wheat crop and now mass animal deaths due to a freezing winter, locally known as “dzud”, are threatening more pain for the country, where farming accounts for about 13 percent of the economy. The last dzud in 2009-2010 killed 9.7 million of the country’s livestock, according to the National Emergency Agency of Mongolia.

While the government has not yet declared the current winter a natural disaster, it has warned the situation could get worse. So far, a drop in temperatures to minus minus 67 Fahrenheit has killed nearly 200,000 livestock.

The weather and grazing conditions are already worse than they were in the previous dzud, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a statement, citing the Mongolian Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

“Usually for the dzud, the most devastation is observed in March, April and May,” Garid Enkhjin, national program coordinator for the IFRC in Mongolia, told Reuters.

The IFRC said it has launched an emergency appeal for $835,000 to assist 25,500 Mongolian herders, who are at risk of losing their livestock and livelihoods due to the extreme winter.

Currently, 80 percent of Mongolia is under snow, making it difficult for nomadic families to travel along centuries-old pasture routes to find food for their livestock. Aggravating the situation is the fact that herders can live up to 31 miles from urban settlements and many are without cars.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has said it plans to provide trucks to get aid to families’ doorsteps at some of the most-difficult-to-reach areas.

“We want to relieve the burden of that last mile of distance to the most affected,” Ben Hemingway, USAID’s regional adviser, said on phone from Bangkok.

In the worst affected districts, sheep and other livestock have started dying. Many herders are trying to sell their animals while they are still alive, leading to an oversupply of livestock that has driven down market prices.

Although the death toll for animals so far is far less than in 2009, “the impact on the people is more or less the same”, said Enkhjin. “Livelihoods will be impacted immediately and have devastating effects.”

(Reporting by Terrence Edwards; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Death toll rises to 8 as tornadoes sweep through Southeast

The death toll from the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that damaged homes and businesses across the United States over the past two days now stands at eight, officials said.

The National Weather Service received 68 reports of tornadoes in the Gulf Coast and Southeast on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with about 500 reports of wind damage from Florida to Maine. The reports mentioned damages to homes and businesses, indicating some were destroyed, as well as numerous downed trees and power lines throughout the storm area.

Tornadoes were reported in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida on Tuesday, and Florida, Virginia and North Carolina on Wednesday. It’s possible that some of those storm reports reference the same funnel cloud, as there are numerous counties listed multiple times.

Officials said severe weather killed five people Wednesday, four in Virginia and one in South Carolina. They came a day after tornadoes killed two people in Louisiana and one in Mississippi.

The Virginia State Police said three people were killed in Waverly, where a funnel cloud was reportedly spotted, and “significant debris” left two state highways impassible in the area.

Officials in Appomattox County said one person was killed after a reported tornado left a trail of destruction that stretched at least eight miles. In a Facebook post, they said some 100 structures were damaged — 20 severely — and 40 percent of the county’s homes were without power.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency, joining governors in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who issued similar decrees for the severe weather.

McAuliffe’s office said the governor was heading out to survey the damage on Thursday.

The National Weather Service’s reports indicate multiple houses were destroyed near Richmond, Virginia, and five houses were damaged near Granville, North Carolina, a snippet of the storm’s impact.

The reports also say winds toppled trees and power lines in areas where tornadoes weren’t seen.

In South Carolina, the Darlington County Coroner’s Office said a 58-year-old man was killed by a falling tree as he tried to remove storm debris from a road near his home.

Those downed trees and limbs helped knock out power to tens of thousands of people along the East Coast, some of whom were still without electricity on Thursday morning.

That included about 45,000 customers in Connecticut, local utility company Eversource said.

Tens of thousands of Fijians remain homeless after Cyclone Winston

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Fijians remain homeless and living in evacuation shelters in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone at the weekend, officials said on Thursday, as aid began trickling in to the outer reaches of the South Pacific archipelago.

The death toll from Cyclone Winston, the worst storm ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, remained at 42 but officials at Fiji’s National Disaster Management Office fear that figure will rise.

Officials from the disaster agency estimate that 35,000 people are sheltering in evacuation centers, some of which are damaged and running short of food and other supplies. Some 900,000 people live in the archipelago of more than 300 islands

International aid agencies said supplies were being delivered but the scale of the damage to infrastructure, particularly jetties and communications equipment, was making it hard to reach remote communities where help was most needed.

CARE Australia spokesman Dylan Quinnell said there had still been no contact with some remote communities, including one at Yasawa on the northwest coast of Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu, since the cyclone made landfall on Saturday. Others had been reached using radios dropped by the New Zealand air force.

Alice Clements, a UNICEF aid worker, told Reuters by phone from Nadi, Fiji’s main tourism hub, that some communities had been totally destroyed but that rebuilding had already begun.

“People are going out during the day to recover what they can, it’s not like they’re sitting in the shelters helpless, they are salvaging what they can and dusting themselves off,” Clements said.

Ahmad Sami, the acting head of the International Red Cross in the Pacific, said providing shelter and water remained immediate priorities.

“Volunteers on the ground are saying the destruction is like nothing which they have ever seen before,” Sami said.

“Houses have collapsed, communications are still down, power transmission is down, wharves are still not accessible and roads and highways have been damaged,” he said.

Joseph Hing, another UNICEF worker, landed on the worst-hit island of Koro on Tuesday and said it “looked like someone took a torch and just burnt from one side to the other”.

“As we sailed closer, we started to smell the dead carcasses of livestock that were floating past the ships. When we smelt those, we knew that this disaster was really, really bad,” he said in a statement.

Aid workers have warned of potential outbreaks of the Zika and Dengue viruses, both carried by mosquitoes that could breed in the stagnant water left by the storm.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Paul Tait)

Tornadoes kill three in the South, more possible along East Coast

Tornadoes killed at least three people and damaged dozens of homes and businesses as a powerful storm system swept through the Gulf Coast on Tuesday evening, officials said.

More tornadoes were possible along the East Coast today, the National Weather Service warned, saying parts of Virginia and North Carolina had the highest chance of seeing extreme weather.

The service’s Storm Prediction Center received 31 reports of tornadoes in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and the Florida panhandle on Tuesday. Some of those reports may reference the same tornado, as several counties had multiple damage summaries listed.

The National Weather Service said one person was killed when a tornado destroyed a mobile home near Purvis, Mississippi. The St. James (Louisiana) Parish’s official Facebook page added that a tornado hit a mobile home park in Convent, killing two people and sending 30 to the hospital with injuries. The storm also damaged about 100 RVs and trailers there, officials wrote.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, the National Weather Service’s reports indicate tornadoes caused “significant damage” to a gym in Ascension Parish and “widespread structural damage” to homes and businesses in St. John the Baptist Parish. There were also several reports of winds knocking down trees and power lines, and one mention of a 120 mph gust near Mandeville.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency in seven parishes.

“I ask all Louisianans to pray for the victims of the terrible storms that touched down in Louisiana today and especially at the Sugar Hill RV Park in Convent,” he said in a statement.

Governors in Alabama and Mississippi also declared states of emergency ahead of the storms.

The National Weather Service is expecting strong-to-severe thunderstorms from New York to Florida on Wednesday, but said severe weather was most likely to hit northeast North Carolina and southeast Virginia. The service said there was a “moderate risk” of severe thunderstorms in those areas, the second-highest level on a five-tier system, and tornadoes were a possibility.

The service issued several flash flood watches and wind advisories throughout the mid-Atlantic and southeast. Residents in the storm’s path are encouraged to monitor their local forecasts.

Tornadoes possible as strong thunderstorms set sights on Gulf Coast

Forecasts are calling for severe thunderstorms along the Gulf Coast later today, according to the National Weather Service, some of which could generate tornadoes and powerful wind gusts.

The service’s Storm Prediction Center says there is a moderate risk, the second-highest level on a five-tier system, of severe thunderstorms in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. It said the strongest storms could generate tornadoes, high winds and hail.

About 2.8 million people live in the “moderate risk” area, according to the center, a roughly 39,000-square-mile swath that includes cities like Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Montgomery, Alabama, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Other Southern states had lesser risks of severe weather, but areas from Texas to Tennessee and Georgia could see at least isolated storms.

The National Weather Service had not issued any watches or warnings for thunderstorms or tornadoes as of 9:30 a.m. CT on Tuesday. But wind advisories were issued in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana Mississippi and Alabama, warning of gusts of up to 45 mph later today.

The storm is also expected to produce heavy rain, and flash flood watches were issued in parts of Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Residents of the affected states should monitor their local forecasts.

Seperately, the National Weather Service issued winter storm watches in parts of Illinois and Michigan, where between 4 and 11 inches of snow was expected to fall tomorrow and Thursday.

Winter weather advisories were also issued for parts of Pennsylvania, New York and New England, where a wintry mix was expected tonight and Wednesday morning.

Death toll from Fiji cyclone mounts amid health crisis fears

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Fiji began a massive cleanup on Monday after one of the most powerful storms recorded in the southern hemisphere tore through the Pacific island nation, killing 21 people, flattening remote villages and cutting off communications.

Aid agencies warned of a widespread health crisis, particularly in low-lying areas where thousands of Fiji’s 900,000 people live in tin shacks, after crops were wiped out and fresh water supplies blocked.

The Fiji Broadcasting Corp, quoting the country’s National Disaster Management Office, said 21 people had died and four were still missing at sea.

Almost 8,000 people remained hunkered down in hundreds of evacuation centers across Fiji where they had headed before tropical cyclone Winston hit late on Saturday with winds of up to 200 mph.

“The death toll from Cyclone Winston continues to rise and reports of widespread damage are coming in from across Fiji,” said New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully. “It is clear that Fiji faces a major cleanup and recovery operation.”

McCully said a New Zealand Defense Force C-130 would leave for the Fijian capital, Suva, later on Monday with relief supplies and an emergency response team.

The majority of the fatalities were along the western coast and were caused mainly by flying debris and drowning in storm surges, authorities said.

A 36-hour curfew was lifted early on Monday, allowing the Fijian military to ramp up efforts to reach the more remote parts of the archipelago of about 300 islands.

“The Fijians are desperately trying to repair severed lines of communication, but they hold grave fears that the news waiting for them will be dire,” said Raijeli Nicole, Pacific regional director of aid group Oxfam.

“Given the intensity of the storm and the images we have seen so far, there are strong concerns that the death toll won’t stop climbing today and that hundreds of people will have seen their homes and livelihoods completely destroyed.”

Aerial footage of outlying islands taken by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and posted on the Fiji government’s official website, showed whole villages flattened and flooded.

Aid agencies were told at a meeting of Fiji’s National Emergency Operations Center on Monday of potential “catastrophic” damage to Koro Island, Fiji’s seventh-largest island.

“The aerial survey suggested the runway looks OK so they are going to land on this later this afternoon with emergency personal and some supplies,” said Anna Cowley of CARE Australia.

Fiji also reopened its main airport at Nadi.

Food and water supplies are a growing concern, even for areas such as Suva that did not suffer as much damage as the more remote regions.

The Consumer Council of Fiji has urged traders not to sell food and other perishable items that have gone bad due to the effects of the cyclone. The Council’s chief executive Premila Kumar said supermarkets and other food stores should destroy such items.

Survivors spoke of the horror of the cyclone, while aid workers scrambled to help victims.

“The noise was deafening. At one point, I turned to my partner and questioned whether we would actually survive,” Sarah Bingham, an Australian on holiday on Tokoriki Island, told Reuters by telephone.

(Additional reporting by James Regan; Editing by Paul Tait and Richard Borsuk)

El Niño leaves millions of Africans vulnerable to hunger, thirst, disease

A abnormally strong El Niño weather pattern and extreme droughts have left millions of Africans vulnerable to hunger, water shortages and disease, a United Nations agency warned on Wednesday, including about 1 million severely malnourished children who need treatment.

The U.N. Children’s Emergency Fund, or UNICEF, said those children are located in Eastern and Southern Africa, where the extreme weather has adversely affected food supplies. It said families there have skipped meals or sold some of their possessions to cope with rising prices.

In a statement, Leila Gharagozloo-Pakkala, the agency’s regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa, called the situation “unprecedented” and warned of a long-lasting effect.

“The El Niño weather phenomenon will wane, but the cost to children – many who were already living hand-to-mouth – will be felt for years to come,” Gharagozloo-Pakkala said.

Meteorologists have said this season’s El Niño is one of the strongest on record and its effects are likely to continue well into 2016. However, the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs has estimated that areas affected by the El Niño-fueled drought will likely need two years to recover.

El Niño occurs when part of the Pacific Ocean is warmer than usual, setting off a ripple effect that brings atypical and often extreme weather throughout the world. It has been blamed for creating droughts in some nations and floods in others, both of which can destroy harvests.

Last week, four agencies issued a joint statement warning the weather pattern could devastate Southern Africa’s upcoming harvests. The World Food Programme, Food and Agricultural Organization, Famine Early Warning Systems Network and European Commission’s Joint Research Centre said parts of Southern Africa are in the midst of their driest season in 35 years, with Zimbabwe, Lesotho and many South African provinces declaring drought emergencies.

Other nations have implemented measures to reduce water consumption because of low levels.

Two of the harder-hit nations are South Africa and Malawi, and the agencies said maize prices surged to record-high levels in those countries. The agencies warned the window of opportunity to plant crops in Southern Africa had nearly closed, and forecasts point to another poor harvest.

“Over the coming year, humanitarian partners should prepare themselves for food insecurity levels and food insecure population numbers in southern Africa to be at their highest levels since the 2002-2003 food crisis,” the agencies warned, saying it was too early for an exact figure.

Any increase would add to the millions of people who currently need food aid.

That includes more than 10 million Ethiopians, a total UNICEF says could reach 18 million by December. The agency says children have skipped school because they have to search for water.

UNICEF says about 2.8 million people are at risk of going hungry in Malawi, while food insecurity poses an issue for 2.8 million Zimbabwe residents and 800,000 people in Angola.

El Niño has also brought heavy rains to Kenya, which UNICEF says is fueling cholera outbreaks.

The World Food Programme also recently said El Niño has hurt Haiti’s agriculture industry.

The weather isn’t the only the thing impacting people’s ability to secure food.

Violent conflicts have spurred food shortages in other nations, and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network says “emergency” conditions now exist in parts of South Sudan and Yemen.

Mid-Atlantic hit by winter storm, tornadoes reported in South

Portions of the mid-Atlantic remained under winter storm warnings on Tuesday morning, a day after snow fell along the East Coast and tornadoes were reported in four southern states.

The National Weather Service issued the warnings in parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, saying those regions should expect more winter weather this morning. Winter weather advisories were also issued across New England.

The winter weather is expected to transition into rain later today as temperatures rise. Residents of all of the affected states should monitor their local forecasts.

The storm came after several mid-Atlantic and New England communities recorded record low temperatures on Sunday, as bitter cold helped shatter the previous records for Valentine’s Day.

Notably, the National Weather Service said temperatures dipped to -1 degree Fahrenheit in New York’s Central Park, the coldest temperatures recorded on Feb. 14 in the park in 100 years.

In upstate New York, the service said temperatures reached 37 degrees below zero in Watertown and 23 degrees below zero in Syracuse. Those broke Feb. 14 records that had stood since 1979.

Monday’s winter storm brought snow and freezing rain to several states, and the National Weather Service reported a storm-high total of 15 inches fell near Rupert, West Virginia.

Parts of Virginia and Maryland received nine inches of snow, while cities in Kentucky and Tennessee saw more than six inches. Lighter totals were recorded in a broad area from Maine to Georgia, with some areas receiving some freezing rain.

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center also received 17 reports of tornadoes and high winds in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida on Monday.

The reports mentioned downed trees and power lines, damaged homes and buildings. The extreme weather caused at least one injury in Alabama, where Covington County officials reported a tornado destroyed a mobile home.

Tornadoes damaged nine homes, a school and a chicken house in Copiah County, Mississippi. The service also said a tree fell on a semi truck, briefly entrapping one person.

In Smith County, Mississippi, tornadoes caused “major damage to homes and structures” near Sylvarena, and blew a gas pump away from a grocery store.

Damage from heavy winds and hail was reported in several other southern communities.

The extreme weather, particularly the winter storm, had a significant impact on travel.

Flight monitoring website FlightAware.com reported 1,623 United States flight cancellations on Monday, including about 300 apiece at Washington’s Reagan National Airport and New York’s Laguardia Airport. More than 575 flights were cancelled on Tuesday morning, the site reported.