WORLD WEATHER HIGHLIGHTS

SEPTEMBER 2022

EUROPE

At least nine people have died and four are missing after dramatic storms provoked severe flooding in Italy’s central Marche region, forcing politicians to finally raise the topic of the climate crisis a week before general elections (17^th). Dozens of others are reported to have saved themselves by climbing on to rooftops and trees, in scenes described as being akin to an “apocalypse”. Fifty people are being treated in hospital. Heavy rain began to lash the region on Thursday afternoon, with streets turning into rivers and 420mm of rain falling in the worst-hit town, Cantiano, within a few hours, half the amount that fell on the town throughout the whole of 2021, Corriere della Sera reported.

European countries around the Adriatic Sea were experiencing extreme flooding towards the end of last week. The Italian region of Marche was particularly badly affected after a thunderstorm on Thursday afternoon strengthened into the night. Some areas faced more than 400mm of rain, with much of the deluge falling in a couple of hours. Ten people have been confirmed dead in the aftermath of the floods and three others are missing. Satellite images showed the extent of the disaster with flood water flowing into the sea, turning the normally pristine turquoise Adriatic coast brown.

CANADA

Canadian troops are being sent to assist the recovery from the devastation of storm Fiona, which swept away houses, stripped off roofs and knocked out power across the country’s Atlantic provinces.  After surging north from the Caribbean as a hurricane, Fiona came ashore before dawn on Saturday as a post-tropical cyclone, battering Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Quebec with hurricane-strength winds, heavy rains and huge waves.  The defense minister, Anita Anand, said on Saturday that troops would help remove fallen trees and other debris, restore transportation links and do whatever else was required for as long as it took. She didn’t specify how many troops would be deployed.

ASIA

Pakistan has been battered by drastic weather extremes since the start of the year. Deadly heatwaves sent temperatures above 50C (122°F) in the spring, followed by huge wildfires and crippling droughts (17^th). But the floods that have left a third of the country’s provinces underwater in recent weeks have brought with them a new level of human misery – and a glimpse into the apocalyptic impact of the climate emergency in one of the countries least responsible for it.

Super Typhoon Noru has slammed into the Philippines, battering the heavily populated main island of Luzon with strong winds and heavy rain that have forced thousands of people to flee their homes.  The storm was packing maximum sustained wind speeds of 125mph (195km/h) after an unprecedented “explosive intensification”, the state weather forecaster said.

Noru, the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year, made landfall in Burdeos municipality on the Polillo islands, part of Quezon province, at 5.30pm local time.

UNITES STATES

Rescuers searched for a person missing in a mudslide on Tuesday after flash floods swept dirt, rocks and trees down fire-scarred slopes, washed away cars and buried buildings in small mountain communities in southern California (13^th). With thunderstorms forecast and more mudslides possible into Wednesday, evacuation orders remained in place in parts of the San Bernardino Mountains while a wildfire raging 500 miles (805 km) to the north forced residents to abandon their homes. The Mosquito fire burning 110 miles (177 km) north-east of San Francisco erupted in the afternoon just hours after officials had reported making “great strides” in the battle.

A collision of extreme weather events is bearing down on California as wildfires threaten communities, a record-setting heatwave is adding stress to the electrical grid, and moisture from a hurricane is expected to bring thunderstorms and flash floods (8^th).

“This is perhaps the singularly most unusual and extreme weather week in quite some time in California – and that is saying something,” wrote Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, in an analysis on Wednesday.

More than 80 million people in the eastern U.S. were under flash flood watches late on Monday, marking still more extreme weather in a country reeling from record heatwaves in some regions, as the U.S. increasingly feels the effects of the climate crisis. In Georgia, the threat of torrential downpours became a reality on Sunday afternoon, spurring a flash flood emergency in western portions of the state.   The “one-in-1,000-year rainfall event” caused rivers and creeks to swell. Authorities carried out water rescues as homes and businesses were flooded; meteorologists believe that the area could see another one to three inches of rain, according to the news network.

Los Angeles struggled under a brutal heatwave, many streets were quiet as residents followed the official warnings to shelter inside their air conditioned homes (3^rd). Public libraries transformed into cooling centers, and mutual aid groups prepared frozen water bottles to offer relief to unhoused residents. Food vendors were still on the streets, despite describing heat tha reached 115°F (46C) inside a sweltering truck.

Heading into a holiday weekend, southern California is grappling with its hottest weather of the year, with no relief in sight. Even in a city known for its heat, the triple digit temperatures in some towns around Los Angeles are breaking records, and advocates worry that the extremes will prove deadly for workers and others forced to be outside during the hottest hours of the day.

AUSTRAILA

Rescuers responding to a deadly mass whale stranding on Tasmania’s west coast said Thursday that they had released 32 pilot whales into deep waters, while three remain stranded but out of reach in the remote location on the Australian island state.

About 200 of the animals have died so far this week after the stranding was first reported Wednesday and marine wildlife experts rushed to Macquarie Harbor along with Tasmanian police and employees from the parks and wildlife service. The harbor is dangerously shallow, and its entrance is known as “Hell’s Gates.”

This week’s tragedy coincides with the anniversary of Australia’s largest mass stranding on record, when more than 350 pilot whales died in September 2020.

The cause of the latest stranding is unknown, and tests are being carried out on the carcasses, officials said.

Communities on the Queensland-New South Wales border are evacuating flood-prone areas after receiving more than 20cm of rain in three hours on Friday (23^rd). An intense weather system moved east overnight across the Gold Coast and the already soaked NSWW’s rivers, prompting emergency text messages to be sent to some residents.

Although the severe weather warning for the area was lifted on Friday morning, community members in the Northern Rivers said they were nervously watching the situation, with some evacuating in case it deteriorated.

Hazardous weather has killed at least 36 people in northern India over the past 24 hours, including 12 who were struck by lightning, officials said.  Across the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, at least 24 people died after their homes collapsed amid unrelenting rains, relief commissioner Shri Ranvir Prasad said.  Mohamed Usman, 15, was on his friend’s roof in the city of Prayagraj when lightning struck on Friday evening, killing him instantly. His friend Aznan was injured and is being treated in a hospital.

TROPICAL

A tropical storm surging up the California coast brought fierce winds on Friday that threatened to fuel ferocious wildfires already burning across the state (13^th).

After days of record-breaking heat that tested California’s energy capacity, baked moisture out of the drought-stricken landscapes and spurred the spread of deadly fires , the arrival of Tropical Storm Kay produced heavy rains that caused flash floods and threatened more trouble for the state’s electric grid.

Showers hit the San Diego area early on Friday afternoon, and more rain is expected as the storm moves north throughout the day and into the weekend. Kay made landfall as a category 1 hurricane along the coast of Baja California, Mexico, before it was downgraded to a tropical storm.

Hurricane Kay, swirling off the coast of Mexico, is on its way north, bringing with it the chance of strong winds, severe rainstorms, and possibly dry lightning that could increase risks for new fire starts. It also could bring some welcome relief to the week of brutally hot weather.

Two people have died and more than 100 were injured after Typhoon Nanmadol slammed into Japan on Monday 20^th), dumping heavy rain, paralyzing traffic and leaving tens of thousands of homes without power. The worst of the rainfall was seen in the southernmost island of Kyushu, where two people died, according to the fire and disaster management agency, before the typhoon was downgraded to a tropical storm as it made its way to the Pacific Ocean. One of the victims was found inside his submerged car on farmland in Miyakonojo town, and another was recovered from beneath a landslide in Mimata. One person was missing in Hiroshima prefecture, and 115 others were injured across western Japan, the agency said. Most of injuries were minor, with people falling in the rainstorm, hit by shards of broken windows or flying objects.

Hurricane Fiona strengthened into a Category 4 storm Wednesday (21^st) after devastating Puerto Rico, then lashing the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It was forecast to squeeze past Bermuda later this week. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Fiona had maximum sustained winds of 130 mph on Wednesday afternoon and it was centered about 650 miles southwest of Bermuda, heading north at 8 mph.

Hurricane Fiona grew to Category 3 strength and was dumping heavy rain and strong winds on the Turks and Caicos islands on Tuesday (20^th).  Hurricane Fiona unleashed more rain on Puerto Rico on Monday, a day after the storm knocked out power and water to most of the island, and National Guard troops rescued hundreds of people who got stranded.  The governor warned that it could take days to get the lights back on.

One of the strongest storms in at least a decade struck Alaska Saturday with hurricane force winds, high seas and rain that caused coastal flooding.  A low pressure front in the Bering Straight was spinning as wide and strong as any winter storm, but instead of bringing cold weather, it was fed by the volatile air from the former Typhoon Merbok, forecasters said.  The result was 5 inches of rain along the coast south of Anchorage on Saturday, with a flood warning in effect for that coastline through 10 p.m., federal forecasters said.

A tropical storm that dumped heavy rain as it cut across Japan moved into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday after killing two and injuring more than 100, paralyzing traffic and leaving thousands of homes without power.  New damage was reported in southern Japan, where Typhoon Nanmadol hit over the weekend before weakening as it moved north.  On Tanegashima island, south of Kyushu island, a wall was damaged at a Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency’s space center, the Economy and Industry Ministry said. The extent of damage to the building used for rocket assembly was being assessed.

Hurricane Ian strengthened early Tuesday (27^th) into a major Category 3 storm as Florida and Cuba braced for strong winds and possible floods. The hurricane made landfall just southwest of the town of La Coloma in the Pinar Del Río province in western Cuba around 4:30 a.m. ET, with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, according the NHC.  A hurricane warning is in place for the Cuban provinces of Isla de la Juventud, Pinar del Río and Artemisa, while a hurricane watch was issued along the west coast of Florida from north of Englewood to the Anclote River, including Tampa Bay.  A number of counties along Florida’s west coast issued evacuation orders ahead of the storm's arrival. Ian is expected to bring 6 to 12 inches of rain to central-west Florida, 4 to 8 inches to the rest of the peninsula and 4 to 6 inches to the Keys through Thursday.

Residents in Florida braced on Wednesday morning (28^th)for the landfall of a storm that had strengthened overnight into a category 4 hurricane and left Cuba without power after the entire country’s electricity grid collapsed in its wake.  Many businesses in Florida have shuttered and officials ordered 2.5 million people to evacuate. The National Weather Service forecast the center of Hurricane Ian to move over central Florida by Wednesday evening. It has already picked up wind strength close to 155mph (250km/h), though it is expected to slowly weaken as it makes landfall.  On Tuesday the hurricane had smashed through western Cuba, bringing violent winds and flooding that affected infrastructure and devastated some of the country’s most important tobacco farms.

Super Typhoon Noru has slammed into the Philippines, battering the heavily populated main island of Luzon with strong winds and heavy rain that have forced thousands of people to flee their homes (25^th).  The storm was packing maximum sustained wind speeds of 125mph (195km/h) after an unprecedented “explosive intensification”, the state weather forecaster said. Noru, the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year, made landfall in Burdeos municipality on the Polillo islands, part of Quezon province, at 5.30pm local time.

Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the US mainland, has battered south-west Florida with high winds, rain and storm surges as it weakened and moved inland.  More than 2m homes and businesses were left without power as the storm swept ashore in south-west Florida on Wednesday afternoon, bringing “catastrophic” 150mph winds and a deadly storm surge of up to 18ft. Hours later, the storm – estimated to be about 140 miles wide – was downgraded from a category 4 to a category 1 storm as it moved slowly north-east, causing major flooding.  The true scale of the damage remained unclear as darkness fell, with power and communications networks down, and emergency services workers forced to take shelter from the worst of the storm.  Residential areas in Fort Myers Beach and several other coastal cities were almost completely submerged, buildings were damaged, and trees and power lines brought down. The utility company Florida Power and Light warned those in Ian’s path to brace for days without power.

In coastal Florida, desperate people posted to Facebook and other social sites, pleading for rescue for themselves or loved ones. A local sheriff’s office reported that it was getting many calls from people trapped in flooded homes.