Important Takeaways:
- The death toll from Spain’s worst floods in a generation has climbed to 205, rescuers said on Friday, with the number expected to rise as more people are believed missing.
- The agency coordinating emergency services in the eastern Valencia region said 202 people had been confirmed dead there, with officials in Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia previously announcing a combined three deaths in their regions.
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Important Takeaways:
- Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century awoke to scenes of devastation on Thursday after villages were wiped out by monstrous flash floods that claimed at least 95 lives. The death toll is expected to rise as search efforts continue with officials removing bodies from vehicles and an unknown number of people still missing.
- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is heading to the region to witness the destruction firsthand as the nation starts a three-day period of official mourning.
- Thousands of people were left without water and electricity and hundreds were stranded after their cars were wrecked or roads were blocked. The region remained partly isolated with several roads cut off and train lines interrupted, including the high-speed service to Madrid, which officials say won´t be repaired for several days.
- The violence of the weather event surprised regional government officials. Spain´s national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The flooding began at lunchtime on Tuesday, wreaking havoc from the provinces of Malaga in the south to Valencia in the east.
- Tragically, a baby was listed as one of the casualties by officials on Wednesday, with a reported national death toll now sitting at 64.
- It is the worst flood-related natural disaster to hit Spain in almost 30 years – after flooding in 1996 killed 87.
- Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gave an emergency briefing this morning saying: “Our thoughts go out to those whose homes and possessions have been devastated and whose lives have been covered in mud.
- President of the Valencia region Carlos Mazon said in a chilling statement: “There are bodies and bodies continuing to appear in places we hadn’t been able to access before.”
- Officials have said it is “Impossible” to put a definite number on the amount of people killed.
- A severe weather warning has been issued in Catalonia, northern Spain, marking a move away from the hard-hit southern and eastern regions.
- Meteocat, the Catalan weather service, has warned of hail that could be as big as two centimeters and possible tornadoes or waterspouts.
- Their warning sits at a level six – the highest possible.
- In one small area on the outskirts of Valencia city, 40 people are either dead or missing, police sources said.
- Chiva, a town near Valencia, was pummeled by more than a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours.
- There are also fears the Cirat-Vallat dam – in Castellon, north of Valencia, could burst with officials putting out a warning after they couldn’t open the gates.
- Why was Spain hit by flooding?
- In layman’s terms, more warm and moist Mediterranean air than usual was sucked high into the atmosphere after a cold system hit the country from the south.
- The easterly wind then pushed all those clouds and rain into eastern Spain.
- Three to four months of rain fell in some places over the space of 24 hours.
- The DANA system hit southern Spain as it arrived from Morocco yesterday and is now expected to head west over southern Portugal.
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Important Takeaways:
- The record-breaking event began Friday and continued through Sunday due to a slow-moving upper-level low-pressure system sitting on top of the Four Corners region in the Southwest, according to the FOX Forecast Center.
- New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order Monday, declaring an emergency in Chaves County after record-breaking rain led to deadly flooding in the Roswell area over the weekend.
- That declaration now unlocks $1 million in funding to help bolster flooding relief efforts in and around the Roswell area.
- “My declaration of a state of emergency for Chaves County will help support local recovery efforts in the aftermath of historic and severe flooding in and around Roswell,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “I’m grateful for the swift actions taken by local authorities and our state departments to help communities in need.”
- In addition to the emergency declaration, Lujan Grisham signed a second executive order that authorized the release of $250,000 to the New Mexico National Guard to support the disaster relief efforts.
- On Saturday, NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center (WPC) warned that heavy precipitation was likely to cause flash flooding in the region.
- That forecast came to fruition late Saturday night when round after round of rain and thunderstorms marched across the Roswell area, eventually leading to rare Flash Flood Emergencies due to the rapidly rising water.
- Rainfall rates of 1-3 inches an hour were reported, which exceeded the average hourly rain rate for October, November and December combined, according to the FOX Forecast Center.
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Important Takeaways:
- The death toll from heavy rains in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state rose to 143, up from 136 on the day before, the local civil defense government body said on Sunday, as rains continue to pour on the state.
- Another 125 people remain unaccounted for in the state, where rivers are reporting rising levels. Weather service Metsul called the situation “extremely worrying.”
- On Saturday evening the government announced around 12.1 billion reais ($2.34 billion) in emergency spending to deal with the crisis that has displaced more than 538,000 people in the state, out of a population of around 10.9 million.
- With this new money, more than 60 billion reais in federal funds has already been made available to the state, said the federal government in a statement on Saturday.
- Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the state will rebuild what was destroyed.
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Important Takeaways:
- Heavy, relentless rains flooded Pittsburgh-area streets and prompted water rescues Thursday night, as a severe storm system threatened parts of the eastern U.S. into Friday.
- The heavy rains were triggered by the same storm system that unleashed tornadoes and heavy rains across much of the South and Southeast this week, with flood emergencies declared in three other locations.
- The National Weather Service received over 200 reports of severe weather from Tuesday night to Thursday evening — with reports of at least 14 tornadoes striking Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
- Flood watches were in effect in northern New Hampshire and central Maine due to the threat of flash and river flooding.
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Important Takeaways:
- Death toll from Libyan floods tops 11K, threat of waterborne illnesses looms
- More than 11,000 people have been killed by devastating floods in Libya, with more than 10,000 still missing and survivors now facing the threat of waterborne diseases.
- National and international rescue workers continue to sift through the rubble for bodies after two massive dams burst in the northern African country Monday, killing thousands and leaving 40,000 homeless, authorities said.
- Health officials now worry that diseases arising from the tainted waters could bring another wave of deaths.
- Mediterranean storm Daniel sparked the mayhem, with heavy rains bursting dams and sending a wall of water over two stories high raging across eastern Libya, with the worst damage in the port city of Derna.
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Important Takeaways:
- The number of people killed by the devastating flash flooding in northern Libya remained unclear Thursday, due to the daunting scale of the catastrophe…but it was undoubtedly well into the thousands.
- An enormous surge of water, brought by torrential downpours from Storm Daniel over the weekend, burst two upstream river dams and reduced the city of Derna to an apocalyptic wasteland where entire blocks and untold numbers of people were washed into the Mediterranean Sea.
- Hundreds of body bags lined its mud-caked streets Thursday, awaiting mass burials, as traumatized and grieving residents search mangled buildings for the missing and bulldozers worked to clear streets.
- More than 3,000 bodies had been buried in Derna alone, while another 2,000 were still being processed. He said most of the dead were buried in mass graves outside the city, while others were transferred to nearby towns and cities.
- An official with the U.N.’s World Health Organization in Libya told the AP the number of fatalities could reach 7,000, given how many people were still missing, adding that “the numbers could surprise and shock all of us.”
- Speaking to the Al Arabia television network, Derna’s Mayor Abdel-Raham al-Ghaithi said the final death toll could even be as high as 20,000.
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Important Takeaways:
- Biblical flooding in Beijing after heaviest rain in 140 years
- Torrents of water gushed through streets in China as moisture from former Typhoon Doksuri triggered catastrophic flooding over the weekend and into the start of August.
- Doksuri made landfall last Friday in the Chinese province of Fujian, located roughly 1,000 miles (1,609 km) south of Beijing, and lost wind intensity over the weekend as it pushed inland. However, the tropical moisture fueled extreme rain across the country for days.
- More than 800,000 people were forced to relocate in and around Beijing after nearly 30 inches of rain triggered some of the worst flooding in the city’s history.
- At least 26 people have died due to the flooding. The death toll may continue to climb as officials assess the damage and as floodwaters gradually recede.
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Luke 21:25-26 “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Important Takeaways:
- More Rain, Snow in California from Ninth in Series of Storms
- The ninth atmospheric river in a three-week series of major winter storms was churning through California on Monday, leaving mountain driving dangerous and the flooding risk high near swollen rivers even as the sun came out in some areas.
- The University of California Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab tweeted Monday morning that it had recorded 49.6 inches (126 cm) of new snow since Friday.
- A backcountry avalanche warning was issued for the central Sierra, including the greater Tahoe area.
- The sun came out Monday in San Francisco, where 20.3 inches (51.5 cm) of rain
- The average for the “water year” is 19.6 inches (49.8 cm), “so we’ve surpassed the yearly total with 8 more months to go”
- In Monterey County, the swollen Salinas River swamped farmland over the weekend and officials said Monday that it was still rising.
- Across the bay in Berkeley, 10 homes were evacuated Monday when a sodden hillside collapsed
- Forecasters were keeping their eyes on a storm forming in the Pacific to see if it gains enough strength to become the state’s 10th atmospheric river of the season
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