GLOBAL WEATHER HIGHLIGHTS

SEPTEMBER 2023

EUROPE

Gusts of 70mph were recorded as the first named storm of the autumn, Agnes, swept across Britain and Ireland, damaging buildings, causing travel delays and leaving homes without power. The Met Office issued severe weather warnings covering much of the UK, where strong winds and heavy rain were expected on Wednesday evening and into Thursday.  Named after the Irish astronomer and science writer Agnes Mary Clerke, the storm brought winds of 70mph to south-west Ireland with gusts of up to 80mph in coastal areas and 60mph inland predicted for parts of Britain.

SOUTH AMERICA

A ferocious heatwave was sweeping South America, and samba composer Beto Gago (Stuttering Bob) saw only one thing to do: pop out for an ice-cold beer with his drinking buddy Joel Saideira – Last Order Joel (26^th).  “Damn, it was grim around here yesterday,” the 76-year-old musician grimaced as he stood outside his home in Irajá – reputedly Rio’s hosttest neighborhoods – with a bohemian’s potbelly spilling out over his lilac shorts. “It was bloody miserable. Even Lucifer was using a fan! He couldn’t bear the heat either!” chuckled Gago’s son, a 36-year-old sambista called Juninho Thybau.  Irajá – a No 3-shaped chunk of north Rio famed for its samba stars and oppressive heat – is far from the only corner of Brazil that has been baking under unforgiving and unseasonal temperatures. Having just emerged from its warmest winter since 1961, South America’s largest country is experiencing a mercilessly hot start to spring. With temperatures soaring towards – and in some places over 40C (104F) – newspapers and weather forecasters have drawn comparisons with global hotspots including Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and even Dallo, Ethiopia, which is reputedly the world’s hottest inhabited place.

An extratropical cyclone in southern Brazil has caused floods in several cities, killing at least 31 people and leaving more than 1,600 homeless.  More than 60 cities have been battered by the storm since Monday night, and Rio Grande do Sul’s governor, Eduardo Leite, said the death toll was the state’s highest due to a climate event.  Rescue efforts expanded farther west on Wednesday with helicopters headed to the Rio Pardo Valley. Search and rescue teams had been focusing around the Taquari Valley, about 150km (31 miles) north-west of the state capital Porto Alegre, where most of the victims and damage were recorded.  The floods in Rio Grande do Sul were the latest in a series of such disasters to have recently struck Brazil, where more than 50 people were killed in São Paulo state earlier this year after extensive downpours caused landslides and flooding.  More heavy rains were expected to hit the state’s center-south region, but possibly sparing worst-hit areas.  President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday he had spoken to Leite to offer the federal government’s full support for the state to “face this crisis”.  Lula sent two ministers to the state to oversee search and rescue efforts and said the vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, would also be “on standby” to travel there.  Authorities maintained three flooding alerts on Wednesday – for the Jacui, Cai and Taquari Rivers.

SOUTH AFRICA

A level 9 orange warning was issued by the South African Weather Service for the Western Cape before heavy rain that moved over the country at the weekend. This is due to a cut-off low system that intensified on Sunday, leading to widespread thunderstorms and strong winds. More than 100mm of rain was due to fall in 24 hours. Gale-force winds were also expected to affect the western coast on Monday, possibly leading to storm surges. Temperatures were forecast to drop as this system passes over, falling up to 10-15C below the seasonal average.  After the devastation caused by Storm Daniel in Greece at the start of the month, Greece is expecting yet more heavy rain later this week. Greece’s Hellenic National Meteorological Service has put out an adverse warning for rain starting on Monday, with the heaviest and most widespread downpours expected on Wednesday. These heavy rains will affect western, central and northern regions, and could lead to some localized flooding, and perhaps trigger landslides. It follows a weekend of high temperatures in the region, with peaks in the high 30Cs.

CANADA

Tens of thousands in New England and Canada remained without power on Sunday morning after the deadly storm Lee struck Nova Scotia on Saturday afternoon as a post-tropical cyclone. In Nova Scotia, nearly 100,000 customers were without power, according to PoweOutage.com.  Maine was dealing with about 40,000 outages as of Sunday morning, and New Brunswick had about 12,000, the website also said.

Lee- which caused at least one death, involving a man whose car was battered by a falling tree – continues to pack maximum sustained winds of 45mph (72km/h) in some areas of Canada’s Atlantic coast, the US’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.  Authorities warned that road conditions remained precarious in some regions, including hazards such as felled trees and power lines, the CBC said.

UNITED STATES

Residents in Phoenix, Arizona, are set to experience some relief from the blistering heatwave following the city’s record of the most days at or above 110F (43.3C) this year despite reaching 112F (44.4C) on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).  On Sunday, the NWS announced that temperatures in Arizona’s largest city will finally begin to retreat “closer to the seasonal normal” with highs expected to range between 102F (38.9C) and 104F (40C) between Monday and Friday. Sunday’s temperature broke the daily high record of 111F (43.9C) set in 1990.  The NWS also said that there was a 25% chance of a passing shower or storm on Tuesday, focused mainly over higher terrain. “Only around a month to go until the average last 100-degree day,” it added.

ASIA

Hong Kong’s heaviest rain since records began 140 years ago has left two people dead and more than 100 injured, as unusually wet weather caused by typhoons brought more disruption to southern China.  Videos showed water cascading down steep hillsides in the former British colony, causing waist-deep flooding in narrow streets and inundating malls, railway stations and tunnels.  The extreme weather also brought chaos to the nearby Chinese city of Shenzhen, a tech hub of more than 17.7 million people, with business and transport links across the economically important Pearl River delta severely hit.  “I’ve never seen scenes like this before. Even during previous typhoons, it was never this severe. It’s quite terrifying,” said Connie Cheung, 65, an assistant nurse in Hong Kong.  The torrential rain was brought by Haikui, a typhoon that made landfall in the Chinese province of Fujian on Tuesday. Although it weakened to a tropical depression, its slow-moving clouds have dumped huge volumes of precipitation on areas still soaked after a super typhoon a week earlier.  Hong Kong’s weather bureau issued its highest “black” rainstorm warning early on Friday. It said more than 200mm (7.9ins) of rain was recorded on Hong Kong’s main island, the Kowloon district and the north-eastern part of the city’s New Territories from late on Thursday.  The alert was lowered by 6pm but authorities warned of risks from continuing flooding.

Typhoon Haikui moved across Taiwan on Sunday, unleashing torrential downpours, accelerating winds and plunging thousands of households into darkness after the first big storm to hit the island directly in four years made landfall.  More than 7,000 people were evacuated from high-risk areas, while hundreds of flights were cancelled and businesses closed in preparation for the storm.  Authorities reported that more than 40 people were injured in the storm, including at least two in the mountainous Hualien county when a falling tree hit a car.  Taiwan’s central weather bureau confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the typhoon made landfall at 3.40pm local time (8.40am GMT) in coastal Taitung, a mountainous county in lesser-populated eastern Taiwan.

Typhoon Saola has made landfall in southern China after nearly 900,000 people were moved to safety and most of Hong Kong and other parts of coastal southern China suspended business, transport and schools.  Guangdong province’s meteorological bureau said the powerful storm churned into an outlying district of the city of Zhuhai, just south of Hong Kong at 3.30am local time. It was forecast to move in a south-westerly direction along the Guangdong coast at a speed of about 10mph (17km/h), gradually weakening before heading out to sea.