Hurricane Richard battered Honduras' Caribbean coast before reaching BelizeHurricane Richard has hit the Central American nation of Belize, knocking out electricity and blowing off roofs, but no deaths or injuries were reported.
Some 10,000 people took shelter in schools and churches.
Richard was downgraded to a tropical depression as it headed west-north-west with its winds decreasing to 55km/h (35 mph).
It is moving at 13km/h (8 mph), and is forecast to reach the Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday morning.
Mexico's state-run oil company Pemex said it did not expect Richard to affect offshore oil production.
Earlier on Monday, Patrick Jones of the Belize radio station Love News FM told the BBC that there was "massive flooding" in Belize City, after the hurricane blew in just to its south.
"A number of people have been calling for emergency services to come rescue them because they are either trapped by the rising water, or because their houses have collapsed," he said.
Belize City, which has a population of about 100,000, contains a large number of wooden, tin-roofed homes that are vulnerable to strong winds.
When it hit, Richard was rated as a Category One hurricane, the lowest on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale. It was the 10th storm of the hurricane season.
But as it moved into northern Guatemala on its way into south-eastern Mexico, it was downgraded to a tropical storm and then a depression.
Earlier, the storm hit Honduras' Caribbean coast.
Lisandro Rosales, the head of Honduras' permanent emergency commission, said no deaths or injuries had been reported.
A storm stronger than the one that sank the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975 is expected to slash across the Midwest tomorrow, snarling Chicago travel and whipping waves as high as 30 feet across Lake Michigan.
A line of severe thunderstorms driving wind gusts of 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour will arrive before 10 a.m., said Andrew Krein, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Romeoville, Illinois.
“The morning commute is going to be really messy,” Krein said. “Visibility is going to be almost nothing at least for a short time.”
The storm will be a cyclone, with projected central pressure, a measure of its strength, forecast to be 28.35 inches. That would make it the second most severe system to strike the Great Lakes, according to the weather service.
The Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Nov. 10, 1975, in Lake Superior about 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan, with a crew of 29, according to the Great Lakes Ship Wreck Museum’s website. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard pop charts in 1976.
The Edmund Fitzgerald storm had a central pressure of 28.95 inches. The strongest storm recorded in the lakes was the “Great Ohio Blizzard” of January 1978, which had a central pressure of 28.05 inches.
Hurricane Comparison
In comparison, when Hurricane Earl reached Category 3 strength in the Atlantic at the end of August, its central pressure was recorded at 28.20 inches.
Great Lakes cyclones aren’t like hurricanes, however, Krein said. The storms gather their energy from the Jet Stream and the upper atmosphere, while hurricanes draw their power from warm ocean waters and have the strongest winds wound tightly around the core.
Krein said the storm also isn’t likely to produce a lot of rain. Aside from the heavy thunderstorms that arrive with the first blast of wind, the weather will be drier and breaks may appear in the clouds.
The blue sky shouldn’t deceive anyone, he said. The storm will last at least two days and will cause a problem for large trucks and possibly trains, as well as ships on Lake Michigan.
In advance of the storm, the weather service has issued a high wind watch from South Dakota to Ohio. A watch means sustained winds of as much as 40 mph are possible. In addition, a high wind warning, meaning gusts of 75 mph are possible, has been issued for parts of northern Illinois and Wisconsin, according to the weather service.
A storm warning has been issued for Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
) covered in this blog entry, did you know the "Perfect Storm" (yes, that one) was going on at the same time as the Midwest Halloween blizzard? Come to think of it, compare the final weather map in Ostro's blog (from Nov. 2, 1991) to the rather poor rendition I provided above. Look familiar? Just sayin'!
At least 10 people have been killed in the Philippines by a typhoon which hit the north of the country on Monday.
Officials say the toll could rise; communications links are down and the full extent of damage is not known.
Typhoon Megi was the strongest to hit the Philippines for several years and caused significant damage, tearing the roofs off houses and cutting power.
It has now passed over the main island, Luzon, and is heading towards the southern coast of China.
Forecasters predict severe weather there by the weekend.
On the southern Chinese island of Hainan, the rain prompted more than 100,000 people to leave their homes over the weekend.
Typhoon Megi could also hit Vietnam, where unrelated floods have swept people away and flooded thousands of homes, killing at least 31 people, with 23 people missing.
Flash floods have also hit northern Thailand's Nakhon Ratchasima province.
Rice fearsIn the Philippines, rescue teams were heading for towns in eastern Luzon where Megi made landfall.
Reports from the region said houses had been destroyed and utility poles were down, meaning many areas were without power. Many roads were said to be blocked by fallen trees.
"The waves in Maconacon were as big as houses and swamped the town plaza facing the Pacific Ocean," said Faustino Dy, the governor of hard-hit Isabela province, as he appealed for help.
Officials said severe damage had also been done to the rice crop.
The agriculture department estimated that at least 10% of the rice crop in the Cagayan valley - the second biggest production area - had been damaged.
Four people were killed on Monday in Pangasinan province, north of the capital, Manila - three were a mother and her children crushed in their house by a falling tree.
The fourth person was killed by lightning, a national Red Cross spokesman Alex Rosete said.
A storm surge in Maconacon drowned three more people, Mr Dy said.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council had earlier reported three people killed elsewhere in the north of Luzon but the details remain unclear.
But President Benigno Aquino said planning ahead of the typhoon had helped the country to escape with relatively little damage.
"The damage and loss of life could have been much greater had we not prepared for the storm," he said.
Typhoon Megi was the strongest to hit the country in four years, with its full force directed at the northern coastal provinces and the Cagayan valley.
It was a category five super typhoon with winds in excess of 250 km/h (155 mph) when it hit the east coast of north Luzon shortly before noon on Monday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11571433
In Vietnam, officials say up to 31.5 inches of rain have pounded areas in just a few days, forcing 126,000 people to flee their homes. Earlier flooding this month left more than 80 people dead or missing.
Megi could add to the misery.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39716105/ns/weather?gt1=43001BUDAPEST, Hungary – Officials say one of the cracks on the damaged reservoir that flooded towns in western Hungary with red sludge has widened slightly but is not expected to upset plans for area residents to return to their homes soon.
Disaster agency spokeswoman Gyorgyi Tottos says a crack on the northern wall of the metals plant's storage pool holding a byproduct of aluminum manufacturing widened by around half an inch (1.5 centimeters) on Thursday.
Tottos says plans are still on for residents of Kolontar, the town closest to the 24-acre (10-hectare) reservoir, to return to their homes starting Friday and a new protective wall will be in place.
The red sludge that spilled last week, killing nine people, is a highly caustic byproduct of the production of alumina, which is used to make aluminum.
BRUSSELS (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said Pakistan's wealthy needed to dig into their own pockets to match global efforts to help it recover from 9.7 billion dollars of flood damages.
"It's absolutely unacceptable for those with means in Pakistan not to be doing their fair share to help their own people while taxpayers in Europe, the United States and other contributing countries are all chipping in," Clinton said.
The World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADN) said they estimated damages from the floods that began in July at 9.7 billion dollars, almost double the amount caused by Pakistan's 2005 earthquake.
The once-Category 2 hurricane was downgraded to a tropical depression in the morning, with maximum sustained winds dropping to 25 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Cuban officials discontinued all storm warnings.
The earthquake struck at 9:06 a.m. about six miles east of Norman in Cleveland County, sharply shaking portions of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated the magnitude to be 4.3, but research seismologist Austin Holland said the Oklahoma Geological Survey measured it at 5.1. The higher figure would make Wednesday's temblor the second-strongest here since records began.
Weather forecasts say Category-1 Typhoon Megi is expected to strengthen with winds of at least 93 mph as it makes landfall along the northeastern coast of the main island of Luzon this weekend.
On Friday, the weather bureau warned fishermen and travelers to stay out of harm's way and farmers to harvest crops early. It expects heavy rainfall of 2 inches per hour.
More than 100 people were killed by a typhoon in July, when an angry President Benigno Aquino III fired the head of the weather bureau for failing to predict that the storm would hit Manila.
Nearly 700 people in a small town within Lagos, Nigeria, will be moved to a relief camp due to heavy flooding that has plagued the region since September, according to a state governor.While speaking to affected residents, Fashola emphasized that the area is in a flood plain and that people must be ready to move.
He said that the government alone can't solve the problem and they need help from everyone in the area to get through the flooding and limit the damage, asking residents to refrain from using flood-stricken roads.
"We have to wait for this water to subside," Fashola said. "Nature will take its course, but what we can do as a people is work together to mitigate the advanced consequences."
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/10/12/nigeria.flooding/index.html
Hurricane Paula developed in the southwest Caribbean Sea and is the ninth hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic season.
Paula is currently in the Gulf of Honduras as a category one storm producing torrential rain and sustained winds of 75mph (121km/h). The storm is moving in a northwest direction at 10mph (16km/h) towards the eastern Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.
Although Paula isn't expected to make landfall, heavy rain associated with the hurricane may produce flooding across the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Forecasters expect as much as 150mm (6 inches) of rain in places.
Flood warnings are also in place for low-lying areas of Belize and north Honduras for the next few days.
After brushing past the Yucatan Peninsula, Hurricane Paula is then expected to track in a northeast direction which will take it to Cuba by Friday.
Meanwhile another Tropical Storm is likely to form in the Bay of Bengal, expected to bring torrential rain to Calcutta and perhaps Madras later this week.
Reed Timmer Photo: Dick McGowan/ Discovery Storm Chasers
If we all go down in a cataclysmic hurricane, expect to see Reed Timmer right in its eye, wielding his videocam. The star of Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers, Timmer pursues extreme weather with the help of the Dominator, his trusty armored SUV. Timmer’s new book, Into the Storm, details his adventures as a professional storm chaser. We caught up with him over the summer at his home in tornado-prone Norman, Oklahoma, during a brief parting of the clouds.
How are you doing? It’s a little slow now that the storm season is over. I guess I’m suffering from withdrawal. But we usually have hurricanes to chase in the fall, so that’s something to look forward to.
Most people run away from storms. Why do you charge into them? I like being close to the most powerful thing on the planet. It’s so humbling but so beautiful at the same time. And I like the challenge of chasing down storms. It’s like hunting—you never really know in advance what’s going to happen. There’s something freeing about the chaos.
What’s a typical storm chase like? On the way to the target area, the anticipation is out of control. You’re eating gas station burritos and slamming 10 energy drinks a day. But when you see the storm approaching, it’s so beautiful. You don’t think, oh, this thing could throw us miles into the air. You’re just mesmerized. Then, as you get up close to the funnel, the winds are insane. The vehicle shakes back and forth, and your ears pop because the pressure is so low. There’s a little place in your brain that says, we gotta get the hell out of here! But by that point, it’s too late.
That’s a little reckless … I don’t feel like I’m living unless I’m taking chances.
Still, these things are incredibly destructive. Of course. Storm chasing is fun and exciting, but when you see the damage afterward, it’s sad. It’s an emotional roller coaster.
How’s your personal life? Well, I don’t really have one. All my long-term relationships have ended in part because of storm chasing. I’ve skipped out on things at the last minute—obligations like weddings. It’s pretty hard to plan things, and I think that can be frustrating for someone who wants a more normal life. To be honest, it’s kind of depressing sometimes.
Is it all worth it? Oh yeah, yeah. I’m happiest when I’m 200 yards from a tornado. You would be, too. It’s life-changing, I promise you. Once you start, you never stop. I’d be fine if a tornado took out my house here in Norman, as long as I had my dog and all my tornado tapes. I’d park right next to my house in the Dominator and watch it blow away.
