JUNE 2024

ASIA

Guangdong province in southern China has once more experienced severe flooding, two months after the late April floods and landslides led to more than 50 deaths.  On Sunday 16 June, heavy rainfall affected the area, with an average of 199mm falling in Pingyuan county. The town of Sishui experienced the highest rainfall totals of 367mm, with three others in the area recording more than 300mm.  Rain continued to fall throughout the rest of the week, leading to severe flooding, landslides and mudslides as the Shiku and Songyuan rivers topped their banks. So far, 47 deaths have been linked to the flood, mostly in Meizhou city, with an estimated direct economic loss of $500m (£400m).  Meanwhile, northern China is suffering from severe drought after weeks of scarce rainfall and extreme heat. Since the start of June, the area has been experiencing temperatures in the 30s and 40s celsius, leading to an ongoing heatwave affecting crops, the energy sector and public health. So far, 72 weather stations have recorded severe drought conditions in Henan province, with more than 20 stations in neighbouring Hebei and Shandong observing record temperatures this month.  The agricultural industry is particularly concerned about this drought, as the time between mid-May and mid-June is the harvest and when the planting of autumn crops begins. South Korea has also been experiencing significant heat this month, and the national meteorological administration has said it is the warmest June on record.  On Wednesday 19 June there were heatwave warnings issued for 92 regions across South Korea. Several cities have broken their June temperature records, including Gwangju, which reached 37.2C (99F), and Dajeon, which peaked at 36.1C.  Although the capital, Seoul, did not quite set a new record, this marked the hottest June day since 1958, with highs of 35.6C. The heat was caused by high pressure in conjunction with warm westerly winds.

As the water tanker drove into a crowded Delhi neighborhood, a ruckus erupted. Dozens of residents ran frantically behind it, brandishing buckets, bottles and hoses, and jumped on top of it to get even a drip of what was stored inside. Temperatures that day had soared to 49C (120F), the hottest day on record – and in many places across India’s vast capital, home to more than 29 million people, water had run out.  Every morning, Tripti, a social health worker who lives in the impoverished enclave of Vivekanand Camp, is among those who has to stand under the blazing sun with buckets and pots, waiting desperately for the water tanker to arrive.  “People have to wait for two to three hours in the queue for just for the couple of buckets of water,” she said. “The increasing temperature has made it worse. As the heat is increasing, we need more water but the supply is in fact decreasing. We are suffering badly and heat is making it impossible to live.”

UNITED STATES

Floodwaters forced people out of their homes in parts of Iowa, the result of weeks of rain, while much of the US longed for relief on Saturday from yet another round of extraordinary heat.  Sirens blared at 2am in Rock Valley, Iowa, population 4,200, where people in hundreds of homes were told to get out as the Rock River could no longer take rain that has slammed the region. The city lacked running water because wells were unusable.  The mayor, Kevin Van Otterloo, said a state helicopter was on its way to help but was called off when boats were able to reach stranded residents.  “We’ve had so much rain here,” he said. “We had 4in last night in an hour and a half. Our ground just cannot take any more.”

It’s been a harrowing week of fire and flood in New Mexico. Just days after a pair of fast-moving fires roared across drought-stricken landscapes and into communities, a tropical storm swirled north, unleashing downpours and golf ball-sized hail over scorched slopes that had only just burned.  As the dueling dangers of two weather extremes converged, charred debris flowed into neighborhoods, crews were temporarily evacuated from the firefight as emergency officials pivoted from fire support to flood rescues, and strong winds swept up dried soils to create one of the largest dust storms the state has ever seen.  Across the arid south-west, where fire risks typically rise with the temperatures in the spring before they are doused in a summer monsoon, weather patterns like these aren’t unheard of. But the climate crisis has supercharged extreme conditions, setting the stage for new types of catastrophes that are increasing in both intensity and frequency.

Daily heat records were broken in the early season heatwave, yet relief in sight as cooler weather forecast.  About 65 million people were under heat alerts in the north-eastern and midwest states on Friday, as an early season heatwave in the US continued to roast the region.  Record temperatures were set in some areas, with heat indexes that combine temperature and humidity hitting 100F and 110F. Calendar-day highs were broken across Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.  The National Weather Service warned that people without reliable air conditioning would be most affected. Across the Ohio River valley, the heat-risk index was at level 4 – labeled “extreme” for the next two days.  “This rare and/or long-duration extreme heat with little to no overnight relief affects anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration,” the agency said, adding that it was likely to affect “most health systems, heat-sensitive industries and infrastructure”.

More than 1,400 structures destroyed or damaged after village of Ruidoso residents forced to flee earlier in the week.  A small New Mexican village has been battered by heavy rain that forced evacuations and water rescues, just days after a devastating wildfire killed at least two people and torched more than 1,400 buildings.  Earlier this week, 8,000 residents were forced to flee with little notice as a fast-moving fire quickly burned around Ruidoso as well as on land belonging to the Mescalero tribe and the US Forest Service. On Wednesday, the National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency in the area and warned people to seek higher ground. “Water rescues are ongoing in the Ruidoso area as flood waters surge down the slopes from nearby burn scars,” the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque said on Wednesday afternoon. The flooding temporarily forced some fire crews to evacuate, KOB4 reported. 

A two-year-old boy was killed and his mother critically injured after a fast-developing tornado struck and caused a tree to fall on their home in the suburban Detroit city of Livonia on Wednesday.  Meanwhile, tornadoes also struck in Maryland on the east coast and a brutal heatwave affected the south-west and California as extreme weather continued to mark the start of summer in the US.  The Livonia fire chief, Robert Jennison, said the tree, described as “massive”, landed on a bed where the child and his mother were sleeping. The mother is in critical condition in hospital; a two-month-old who was also in the home is expected to be OK.  “I’ve been here 35 years. I’ve never seen a storm come through like this. It’s devastating, it’s horrible to see,” Livonia resident Melanie Ricketts told CBS News Detroit.

Just as people start bringing out their shorts for the start of summer, one Texas town had to reach for something rarely seen in late May: a snowplough.  Parts of the state saw a dramatic 50F temperature drop on Wednesday thanks to a giant dump of hail, some “DVD-sized”. The storm made western Texas look, briefly, like a winter wonderland.

EUROPE

Though the summer has only just begun, parts of southern Europe are already experiencing scorching temperatures, with Greece recording its earliest ever heatwave last week.  Extreme heat can pose serious health risks, especially for babies, children, pregnant women and elderly people.  If you’ve been affected, tell us: what is it like where you live? How are you coping and what steps are you taking to deal with high temperatures? What is your home and working environment like?  How does it compare with previous summers? What are your plans for the coming months and what are your concerns?

Finland endured exceptionally warm weather in May, with temperatures significantly higher than normal by day and night across large parts of the country. The Nordic nation officially recorded 16 heatwave days, breaking the previous high of 14 set in 2018. According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute, heatwave conditions are defined as days when temperatures reach 25C.  Average temperatures were 3-4C higher than normal in the south and west, and 1-3C above normal in the north and east. At the Hattula Lepaa observation station, 29.9C was recorded on 31 May, made it the warmest day of the month.  The high temperatures were the result of a large and persistent area of high pressure that sat across much of northern Europe, with unusually high temperatures also observed in Norway and Sweden. Human-induced climate change is likely to have played a part, with temperatures about 2C higher than they otherwise would have been in a pre-industrial climate, according to the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

SOUTH AMIRICA

It had been raining for nearly a week when the floodwaters first reached Marcelo Moreira Ferreira’s home in Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul.  His wife and their four children left to seek shelter with relatives, but Ferreira, 51, wanted to stay: his father had built the modest one-story structure and he had lived there his entire life.  By morning, however, the muddy water was up to his chest, and he knew he had no choice but to flee.  The house spent nearly a month under the stinking water, polluted by sewage, dead animals, food waste and the fuel from thousands of submerged vehicles.

TROPICAL

Potential Tropical Cyclone One – a slow churning system of low atmospheric pressure in the Gulf of Mexico – was badgering the Texas coast but had not fully developed,  Meteorologists said on Wednesday.  The storm, which will be named Tropical Storm Alberto when it forms fully, is set to unleash powerful winds, heavy rain and flood threats across the entire southern US, Mexico and Central America. Storm-force winds, which stretch more than 400 miles (640km) from the storm’s center, are already affecting southern Texas.