GLOBAL WEATHER HIGHLIGHTS

DECEMBER 2024

UNITED STATES

As thousands of residents fled a roaring wildfire ripping through Malibu’s  Mountainsides on Monday, Pepperdine University students stayed put.  Howling winds spit embers into the trees of the Christian college’s picturesque campus and the skies cast an ominous orange-and-red haze as students gathered in two buildings in the center of campus.  It’s a strategy that has long served the college, which is nestled into a fire-prone area in the foothills overlooking the Pacific. For years, administrators have instructed students not to leave the sprawling 830-acre school, even when mandatory evacuation orders are issued for the surrounding community.

EUROPE

James Woodbine was woken up by Storm Darragh at 5am, roughly the time the power cut began. His 300-year-old cottage is at the top of a hill in Trofarth in north Wales where yesterday’s winds were fiercest, measured at 93mph nearby in Capel Curig.  “The noise was the strangest thing,” Woodbine said. “There was a thrum coming from the ground, a rumble going through the building whenever there was a gust. I’ve never heard that before. I’ve been here for 30 years, and we had Storm Doris come through in 2017. But this is far worse. I’ve never seen a storm like it.”  Woodbine is one of the hundreds of thousands of people across Britain and Ireland who were affected by Storm Darragh, which was so serious that the Met Office issued a red wind warning, alerting people of the threat to life – only the 19th since 2011.  One man in his 40s died after a tree fell on his van as he was driving along a dual carriageway section of the A59 in Longton, near Preston. Another man died when a tree fell and hit his car in Birmingham yesterday afternoon. At 3am, as winds were gathering pace, a Translink airport express bus left the road and hit a wall near Antrim in Northern Ireland, and the driver was taken to hospital.

CLIMATE

The world has endured a “decade of deadly heat”, with 2024 capping 10 years of unprecedented temperatures, the UN has said.  Delivering his annual new year message, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the 10 hottest years on record had happened in the past decade, including 2024.  The UN’s climate and weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), will publish official temperature figures for the year in January. The organization said the past year was set to be the warmest on record, capping a decade of unprecedented heat fueled by human activities and driving increasing weather extremes, while greenhouse gas levels continued to reach new highs, locking in more heat for the future.  Guterres said: “I can officially report that we have just endured a decade of deadly heat. The top 10 hottest years on record have happened in the last 10 years, including 2024.

ASIA

Southern Thailand is grappling with severe flooding as torrential rainfall, driven by the north-east monsoon, continues to affect the region. During the north-east monsoon, which runs from November to March, winds from the north-east pick up moisture from the Gulf of Thailand and deposit it as heavy rain across the islands in the gulf and into exposed eastern parts of Thailand’s southern peninsula.  While high rainfall totals in southern Thailand are not unusual at this time of year, this year’s has been significantly above average. Ko Samui, Thailand’s second largest island, has recorded 571mm (22.48in) of rain this month – approximately 375% of the December average – with nearly a third of the month yet to go. In the nearby province of Nakhon Si Thammarat on the mainland, another weather station has surpassed 1009mm, more than four times the December norm.

TROPICAL

At least several hundred people are feared to have been killed after the worst cyclone in almost a century ripped through the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte on Saturday, uprooting trees, tearing houses apart and pounding the impoverished archipelago’s already weak infrastructure. Rescuers have been dispatched to the islands, which lie between the coast of Mozambique and Madagascar, but their efforts are likely to be hindered by damage to airports and electricity distribution in an area where clean drinking water is subject to chronic shortages.  Speaking to Mayotte’s la 1ere TV station on Sunday, the archipelago’s prefect, François-Xavier Bieuville, said the confirmed toll of 11 dead was likely to soar over the coming days.  “I think there will certainly be several hundreds, maybe we will reach a thousand, even several thousands,” he said. Bieuville said it would be very difficult to reach a final count given that most residents were Muslim and so traditionally would bury their dead within 24 hours.