AUGUST 2024

ASIA

Halfway through the peak flood season, China has already experienced the highest number of significant floods since record keeping began in 1998, and the hottest July since 1961, authorities said on Friday. This year so far it has recorded 25 “numbered” events, which the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources defined as having water levels that prompt an official warning or are measured at a magnitude of a “once in two to five years” event. At a press conference this week, authorities said 3,683 river flood warnings and 81 mountain flood disaster warnings had been issued, state media reported. Almost 5,000 reservoirs had been put into operation diverting 99bn litters of flood water to prevent the relocation of more than 6.5 million people.

Nearly 300,000 Bangladeshis are taking refuge in emergency shelters from floods that inundated vast areas of the country, disaster officials said.  The floods were triggered by heavy monsoon rains and have killed at least 42 people in Bangladesh and India since the start of the week, many in landslides.  Lufton Nahar, 60, speaking from a relief shelter in Feni, one of the worst-hit districts near the border with India’s Tripura state, said: “My house is completely inundated. Water is flowing above our roof. My brother brought us here by boat. If he hadn’t, we would have died.”  The country of 170 million people is crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers and has experienced frequent floods in recent decades.

UNITED STATES

The largest wildfire in the US swelled to more than 380,000 acres (154,000 hectares) on Tuesday morning, an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles and three times the surface area of Lake Tahoe, as thousands of firefighters battled the blaze in a remote wilderness area in northern California.  Meanwhile, the destruction caused by wildfires raging across the US west came into sharp focus as photographers documented the destruction left by the Borel fire in southern California. The fast-growing fire tore through the historic mining town of Havilah, leaving burnt buildings, cars and forests.  About 2,000 people were ordered to evacuate because of the fire, which burned through the Sequoia national forest. By Tuesday morning, the fire had torn through more than 57,000 acres (23,000 hectares) and was 17% contained.  No fatalities have been reported.

Torrential rains turned streets into raging rivers in parts of Connecticut and New York’s Long Island, trapping people in cars and a restaurant, covering vehicles in mud, and sweeping two women to their deaths, authorities said. Dramatic rescues unfolded as a foot (30cm) of rain fell on some parts of western Connecticut late on Sunday and early Monday, coming down so fast that it caught drivers unaware. The Connecticut governor Ned Lamont, who declared a state of emergency, said more than 100 people were evacuated by search and rescue teams Sunday evening. The bodies of two women who had been in separate cars were recovered Monday in Oxford, a town of 13,000 about 35 miles (56km) south-west of Hartford, officials said. State police identified them Monday afternoon as Ethelyn Joiner, 65, and Audrey Rostkowski, 71, both of Oxford.

METERRANIAN

Greek authorities are continuing to battle scattered fires on the outskirts of Athens as officials take stock of the damage wreaked by a disaster that forced mass evacuations and killed at least one person. On Tuesday, the third day of one of the worst wildfires in living memory, firefighters were helped by a drop in winds as they sought to contain the remnants of an inferno that had reached the capital’s northern suburbs and decimated homes and businesses. “Forty hours after this extremely dangerous wildfire broke out we can now say that there is no active front, only scattered hotspots,” Greece’s climate crisis and civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias, said.  More than 700 firefighters, backed by water-bombing planes, forest commando units, the police, army, forest service employees and volunteers, had helped extinguish the blazes.

The fatal sinking of a luxury yacht belonging to the wife of the British businessman Mike Lynch off the coast of Sicily has focused attention on the ocean phenomenon of waterspouts, how they are formed and the risk they pose to sailors in areas where they are more common.

SOUTH AMERICA

The devastating wildfires that, Brazil’s Pantanal, in June were made at least four times more likely and 40% more intense by human-caused climate disruption, a study has found.  Charred corpses of monkeys, caimans and snakes have been left in the aftermath of the blaze, which burned 440,000 hectares (1.1m acres) and is thought to have killed millions of animals and countless more plants, insects and fungi.  The extent of the destruction exceeded the previous June record by more than 70%. This was driven by extreme fire weather that created a vast tinderbox. The month was the driest, hottest, and windiest June in the Brazilian Pantanal since observations began.

AFRICA

Surging waters have burst through a dam in eastern Sudan, wiping out at least 20 villages and leaving at least 30 people dead but probably many more, the UN has said, devastating a region already reeling from months of civil war. Torrential rains caused floods that on Sunday overwhelmed the Arbaat dam, which is 25 miles (40km) north of Port Sudan, the de facto national capital and base for the government, diplomats, aid agencies and hundreds of thousands of displaced people. “The area is unrecognizable,” Omar Eissa Haroun, head of the water authority for Red Sea state, said in a WhatsApp message to staff. “The electricity and water pipes are destroyed.”  One first responder said that between 150 and 200 people were missing. He said he had seen the bodies of goldminers and pieces of their equipment wrecked in the deluge, and likened the disaster to the devastation in the eastern Libyan city of Derna in September last year when storm waters burst dams, swept away buildings and killed thousands.

EUROPE

Solly the sheep had not had an easy start to life, but his prospects seemed to be looking up. Maggot-ridden when found in a field, Solly defied the expectations of a vet and recovered quickly when an animal shelter took him in. He befriended another sheep at the sanctuary, Star, and became a “leaping, happy lamb”, his rescuers said.  But Solly, named after the Spanish word for sun, could not cope with the scorching heat in Mallorca, Spain. He contracted a disease from mosquitoes, whose breeding window is widening. His frail body quickly declined.  “It was 40C on the day that he died, and he was choking on his own tongue,” said Nicole Eden, who runs the Eden Sanctuary for abandoned animals on the Spanish island.  Flies soon swarmed the body. Unable to leave the other animals, who were also baking in the hot sun, Eden dug Solly a shallow grave with her hands and buried him through her tears.

CLIMATE

Almost every morning, Daniele Montini and his wife, Alfreda, take a stroll in the shallow waters of the Adriatic Sea. The ritual, followed by many residents in Fano, a coastal town in Italy’s central Marche region, is advised by doctors to stimulate blood circulation and maintain a healthy respiratory system through breathing in the salty air.  It is 7.30am and the outside temperature is already a muggy 29C. The couple, who were born in Fano, know that their summers, and their winters, are being transformed by global heating. What they are not quite used to is the stagnant, much warmer sea.On a number of days in July, the sea temperature along Italy’s Adriatic coastline, which stretches from Trieste in the north to Capo d’Otranto in the south, reached a record 30C, and in some areas slightly surpassed that figure.

TROPICAL

Tropical Storm Debby strengthened rapidly on Sunday (4^th) and is expected to develop into a hurricane before making landfall on Florida’s Gulf coast, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, warning of life-threatening ocean surges and devastating flooding.  The hurricane center forecast life-threatening conditions, including storm surges up to 7ft (2 meters). As it slowly moves north through the week, the storm may bring “potentially historic rainfall” of between 10 and 20in (25-50cm) and catastrophic flooding to Georgia and South Carolina, it said.  “There’s some really amazing rainfall totals being forecast, and amazing in a bad way,” Michael Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said to the Associated Press at a briefing on Sunday. “That would be record-breaking rainfall associated with a tropical cyclone for both the states of Georgia and South Carolina if we got up to the 30in level.”  The flooding impacts, which could last through Friday, are expected to be especially severe in low-lying areas near the coast, including Savannah, Georgia; Hilton Head, South Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina.

Hurricane Ernesto barreled toward Bermuda on Thursday after leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico without power or water as sweltering heat enveloped the US territory, raising concerns about people’s health. A hurricane warning was in effect for Bermuda, with Ernesto expected to pass near or over the island on Saturday.  The category 1 storm was located about 605 miles (975km) south-south-west of Bermuda on Thursday morning. It had maximum sustained winds of 85mph (140km/h) and was moving north at 13 mph.  “I cannot stress enough how important it is for every resident to use this time to prepare. We have seen in the past the devastating effects of complacency,” said the national security minister, Michael Weeks.

Tropical Storm Ernesto battered the north-east Caribbean on Tuesday as it took aim at Puerto Rico, where officials shuttered schools, opened shelters and helped move dozens of the US territory’s endangered parrots into hurricane-proof rooms. Ernesto is expected to become a hurricane early on Wednesday, prompting forecasters to issue a hurricane watch for the US and British Virgin Islands as well as the tiny Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra. “Ernesto could be near or at hurricane strength in about 24 hours,” the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said in an advisory issued late Tuesday morning. The storm is forecast to move over or near the US Virgin Islands on Tuesday evening and pass just north-east and north of Puerto Rico late Tuesday and early Wednesday.

Hurricane Debby has killed at least four people in Florida after making landfall in the state’s Big Bend coastal region on Monday morning – while also leaving residents to grapple with widespread power outages, flooding and road closures. Among those reported dead are a 13-year-old boy in Fanning Springs who was killed when a tree fell on top of a house.  Authorities also said the driver of an 18-wheeler was killed after his rig partially fell into the Tampa bypass canal in Hillsborough county. First responders later found the body of the driver in the truck’s cab about 40ft below the canal’s surface.  Meanwhile, as Debby approached and weather conditions deteriorated on Sunday night, a woman and a 12-year-old boy died after the car they were in crashed on a road in Dixie county.

Typhoon Shanshan has killed at least three people and injured about 40 as it barrels through Japan, with more than 250,000 homes left without power.  At the time of writing, 24-hour rainfall totals have reached 300-400mm across swaths of Miyazaki, in the Kyushu region. Up to 630mm of rain has been recorded at one site near Shiiba after about 500mm fell since midnight on Thursday.  The rainfall in one area over a two-day period was equivalent to 50-55% of the average rainfall in the UK across an entire year. Within an hour, some parts of Japan received 50-80mm of rain. The storm erupted in the north Pacific Ocean last week and propagated north-westwards towards Japan at the weekend, strengthening as it did so. By Monday evening, it had developed into a very strong typhoon with sustained winds in excess of 97mph (156km/h). Shanshan peaked during the early hours of Wednesday with 130mph gusts. Fortunately this was short-lived and the winds eased as the typhoon churned towards the south of Japan, weakening to about 90mph as it made landfall in Kagoshima prefecture at about 8am local time on Thursday.