Tag: weather

Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

By Talek Harris, Sahar Al-Attar and Amanda Mouawad DUBAI, April 17, 2024 (AFP) – Dubai’s giant highways were clogged by flooding and its major airport was in chaos as the Middle East financial centre remained gridlocked on Wednesday, a day after the heaviest rains on record. Tailbacks snaked along waterlogged, six-lane expressways after up to 259.5 millimetres (10.2 inches) of rain, the most since records began 75 years ago, fell on the desert United Arab […]

Oman floods kill 14 including schoolchildren

MUSCAT, April 15, 2024 (AFP) – Flooding in Oman has killed at least 14 people, many of the schoolchildren, authorities said following the discovery of the bodies of a woman and child on Monday. The Gulf sultanate’s official news agency initially reported on Sunday nine schoolchildren and three adults had “lost their lives after their vehicles got swept away in gushing wadi waters”. Five others individuals were reported missing in the floods that struck the […]

Sweden sees earliest ‘summer’ on record

STOCKHOLM, April 11, 2024 (AFP) – Sweden has posted its earliest ever start to what it considers to be “summer”, with three southern towns posting average temperatures above 10 degrees C (50F) for five straight days, the country’s meteorological service said Thursday. “A Swedish weather record was broken on Saturday, April 6, 2024. Each day from April 6th to 10th, the average daily temperature was at least 10 degrees at SMHI’s stations in Malmo, Kristianstad […]

Hundreds rescued after flooding in Australia

SYDNEY, April 7, 2024 (AFP) – Widespread flooding in Australia left hundreds needing to be rescued after a natural disaster was declared in regions across New South Wales on Sunday. Intense rainfall at the start of the weekend saw around 300 homes evacuated in north-east Sydney, emergency services said. Floodwaters had caused widespread damage across the state in a very short amount of time, federal minister for emergency management Catherine King said. “The New South […]

Thousands of Philippine schools suspend in-person classes due to heat

By Pam CASTRO MANILA, April 5, 2024 (AFP) – Thousands of schools in the Philippines suspended in-person classes Friday, the education department said, as parts of the tropical country endured dangerously high temperatures. The months of March, April and May are typically the hottest and driest in the archipelago nation, but conditions this year have been exacerbated by the El Nino weather phenomenon. Many schools have no air-conditioning, leaving students to swelter in crowded, poorly […]

Tokyo’s cherry blossoms in full bloom draw crowds

TOKYO, April 4, 2024 (AFP) – Tourists and residents packed Tokyo’s top cherry blossom spots on Thursday to enjoy the full bloom that has arrived in the Japanese capital later than usual this year because of cold weather. The elegant dark branches bursting with pink and white flowers — known as sakura in Japanese — spilled over the moat of the Imperial Palace, where people gathered to snap photos or simply take in the view. […]

Climate change is slowing heat waves, prolonging misery

Climate change is causing heat waves to slow to a crawl, exposing humans to extreme temperatures for longer than ever before, a study published in Science Advances said Friday. While previous research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense, the new paper differed by treating heat waves as distinct weather patterns that move along air currents, just as storms do. For every decade between 1979 to […]

Above-normal temperatures for March-May due to El Nino: UN

By Robin MILLARD GENEVA, March 5, 2024 (AFP) – The warming El Nino weather phenomenon that peaked in December was one of the five strongest ever recorded, the United Nations said Tuesday, predicting that it would produce above-normal temperatures from now to May. Though El Nino is now gradually weakening, its impact will continue over the coming months by fuelling the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) […]

Faulty warnings, deforestation turned Philippine rains ‘deadly’: study

MANILA, March 1, 2024 (AFP) – Faulty warning systems, poverty and deforestation of mountains in the southern Philippines turned recent unseasonably heavy rains into deadly disasters, scientists said in a report Friday. More than 100 people were killed in landslides and floods in January and February on the country’s second-largest island of Mindanao as the northeast monsoon and a low pressure trough brought downpours. A study by the World Weather Attribution group found the unsually […]

China issues highest weather alert as temperatures plunge

Severe weather warnings were in place across swathes of China on Wednesday as temperatures plummeted across the south and Beijing shivered in snowy conditions. Authorities renewed an orange alert — the highest in the country’s three-tier system — warning that average temperatures could fall by six to 12 degrees Celsius by Friday in the south, where they are currently around zero degrees C (32 degrees Fahrenheit). In some areas, temperatures could plunge by more than […]

Deadly landslide in Afghanistan kills 25, snow hinders rescue efforts

KABUL, Feb 19, 2024 (AFP) – A landslide caused by heavy snowfall has killed 25 people and injured eight others in the eastern Afghan province of Nuristan, a disaster management ministry spokesman said on Monday. Earth, snow and rubble swept through the village of Nakre in the Tatin valley of Nuristan overnight on Sunday. “As a result of the landslide, some 25 people have been killed and eight injured,” spokesman Janan Sayeq said in a […]

California clifftop homes teeter on edge after landslide, but stay habitable

DANA POINT, United States, Feb 15, 2024 (AFP) – Multi-million-dollar homes crouched on a California clifftop got a little bit closer to the edge when a landslide brought tons of rock and soil crashing into the sea. Heart-stopping pictures show three mega-mansions in the city of Dana Point apparently now perilously close to the Pacific Ocean following the rockfall. But astonishingly, the properties are still livable, with engineers assuring owners that their homes are in […]