‘Rain bomb’ hits Australia’s northeast, killing seven in floods
A severe storm system pummelled Australia’s northeastern city of Brisbane on Sunday, causing evacuations, power outages and school closures as the death toll climbed to seven from accompanying flash floods.
More than 1,400 homes in the capital of Queensland state were at risk of flooding while more than 28,000 homes were without power statewide, as pristine beaches on the Gold and Sunshine coasts, which are key tourist attractions, all closed.
“We never expected this rain,” state premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told a briefing. “This rain bomb is just really, you know, it’s unrelenting … It’s just coming down in buckets.”
More than 100 schools across the southeast of a state famed for abundant sunshine will be closed on Monday. State rescue services said they received 100 requests an hour for help in recent days.
Among the six killed in the flooding were a 34-year-old man who tried to swim to safety after the waters submerged his car and another whose vehicle was swept away in the most populous state of New South Wales (NSW).
About 700 people were asked to evacuate from the city of Gympie on Saturday after the Mary River system surged beyond 22.06 m (72.4 ft) for the town’s worst flood since the 1880s.
Meteorologists said the deluge and thunderstorms would continue through Monday, before starting to ease off in Queensland, but moving south to New South Wales, where some communities at risk in its northeast have been told to evacuate.
The risk of riverine and flash flooding was “very real over coming days,” said Steph Cooke, the state’s emergency services minister.
Courtesy of reuters.com
Deadly flash floods sweep through Turkey’s Black Sea region
At least 17 people have been killed in flash floods in Turkey’s Black Sea region that have sent water and debris cascading through streets, damaged bridges, and ripped up roads in the second natural disaster to strike the country this month.
The floodwaters brought chaos to northern provinces just as authorities were declaring that some of the wildfires that had raged through southern coastal regions for two weeks had been brought under control.
The floods and the fires, which killed eight people and devastated tens of thousands of hectares of forest, struck in the same week that a UN panel said global warming is dangerously close to spiralling out of control.
Fifteen people were killed in the floods in Kastamonu province and two people died in Sinop, authorities said, adding that search and rescue operations were continuing.
More than 1,400 people were evacuated from the areas affected, some with the help of helicopters and boats, and about 740 people were being housed in student dormitories, the Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) said.
Helicopters lowered coastguard personnel onto the roofs of buildings to rescue people who were stranded as floodwaters swept through the streets, footage shared by the Ministry of Interior showed.
The deluge damaged power infrastructure, leaving about 330 villages without electricity. Five bridges had collapsed and many others were damaged, leading to road closures, AFAD added. Parts of the roads were also swept away.
Television footage showed the floods dragging dozens of cars and heaps of debris along the streets. The heavy rainfall in the region was expected to ease on Thursday evening, AFAD said.
Flooding inundated much of Bozkurt in Kastamonu Province. One building collapsed and a second building was damaged in the town, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. In Bartin province, at least 13 people were injured when a section of a bridge caved in.
Many of the affected areas were left without power and village roads were blocked.
The disaster struck as firefighters in southwest Turkey worked to extinguish a wildfire in Mugla province, an area popular with tourists that runs along the Aegean Sea.
The blaze, which was brought under control on Thursday, was one of more than 200 wildfires in Turkey since July 28. At least eight people and countless animals died and thousands of residents have had to flee fierce blazes.
Authorities said that 299 forest fires, which had burned across southwestern provinces for the last two weeks, had been brought under control.
Courtesy of aljazeera.com
Severe floods as Amazon rivers reach record highs in Brazil
The Rio Negro has swollen to levels unseen in over a century of record-keeping. More than 450,000 people have been affected state-wide.
Residents in Manaus, the biggest city in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, were struggling to cope with severe flooding after heavy rain caused nearby rivers to swell.
The Rio Negro reached its highest water level since records began in 1902, with a depth of 29.98 meters (98 feet) at the port’s measuring station on Tuesday.
The nearby Solimoes and Amazon rivers were also nearing all-time highs.
More than 24,000 families and 15 districts of Manaus have been affected and many people had to leave their homes, according to Brazilian online news site G1. Parts of the port area and the historic center of Manaus were underwater.
More than 9,000 meters of wooden bridges — known as marombas — were built in the hardest-hit areas to help residents navigate the city.
The high water levels are not just confined to Manaus. There has been flooding across almost all of Amazonas state and caused damage in nearly 60 of 62 municipalities.
More than 450,000 people have been affected state-wide.
The Amazon River also reached peak levels in cities including Itacoatiara, located in the east of the state.
Higher-than-usual precipitation is associated with the La Nina phenomenon when currents in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean affect global climate patterns.
Environmental experts and organizations including the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say there is strong evidence that human activity and global warming are altering the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including La Nina.
Seven of the 10 biggest floods in the Amazon basin have occurred in the past 13 years, data from Brazil’s state-owned Geological Survey shows.
Meteorologists say Amazon water levels could continue to rise slightly until late June or July, when floods usually peak.
Courtesy of dw.com
Major flooding continues in USA’s South as Northeast hit with cold blast
There is major to near historic river flooding in parts of the Mid-South, especially in Kentucky on Tuesday.
Locally, 7 inches of rain fell over the weekend in the Mid-South helping local rivers to rise quickly and flooding entire towns. A state of emergency has now been declared for these areas.
Damaging thunderstorms moved through Georgia on Monday, killing one person when a tree feel on a home.
These storms also produced an EF-1 tornado with winds of 90 mph, not related to the victim’s death.
There are flood warnings from Texas to Ohio on Tuesday and 26 states from Texas to Maine are under flood, high winds and wind chill alerts.
The heavy rain has ended in Mid-South but some rivers are still rising or will remain in major to moderate flooding through over the next few days.
The heaviest rain shifted closer to the Gulf Coast from Mississippi to Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina where over the next few days 2 to 3 inches of rain is expected with locally higher amounts possible.
Meanwhile, in the Northeast, arctic cold air is moving through with very gusty winds that are producing power outages.
Wind will continue to gust in the Northeast from New Jersey to Maine at 40 to 60 mph through this morning and will subside in the afternoon.
Wind Chills this morning are below zero from upstate New York to Boston and into New England.
This bitter blast will not last and already by Wednesday most of the Northeast will see temperatures quickly rebound into the 40s and even 50s.
But it is still early March so the cold will be back end of the week as wind chills are expected to fall into the teens and single digits for the I-95 corridor and below zero in upstate New York and into New England.
Courtesy of abcnews.go.com
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