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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (108637)	6/26/2007 7:02:46 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361370

Weather Stuff HEAVY RAINS / FLOODING / LANDSLIDES / WIND - INDIA & PAKISTAN & AFGHANISTAN - are struggling to cope with the effects of three days of rain that left 350 dead. There are warnings that more bad weather - a cyclone and heavy winds - is imminent. More than 140 have been killed in the rains in India. There have also been a number of deaths in Afghanistan. A landslide in northern Afghanistan struck a wedding party, killing six children. Much of Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi - where 200 died - is still without power and water. Officials have been evacuating residents from shanty towns in Karachi, where badly built homes collapsed or were washed away by the torrential rain. In just one area of the city, Gadap in the north-west, more than 1,000 homes have been destroyed. For weeks before the weekend floods, Karachi had been hit hot weather and power cuts, leading to protests and rioting. The army has been asked to help evacuate people from coastal areas. Winds of up to 40 nautical miles an hour are predicted for the coastline of Pakistan. Fishermen have been told to stay on land because of the dangers of three-metre high waves. In India, the flood situation remains grim in parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu and Orissa have been put on alert. BRITAIN - Hundreds of people were told to flee their homes amid fears a reservoir dam was set to crumble after torrential rain brought chaos to South Yorkshire. Two people were killed in Sheffield as floods raged through the city. A man was swept away as he got out of his car and police hunting a missing teenager recovered a body from a swollen river. But hours later more disaster loomed as a dam holding back the Ulley reservoir threatened to break. "We have not seen anything like this before." Three RAF rescue helicopters were brought in to help pluck people to safety from their roofs. "These are UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS OF FLOODING." The torrential rain which swept across Britain Monday, bringing flooding, tornados and death, created the WETTEST JUNE DAY ON RECORD. Four tornados were reported: in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire; Treeton, South Yorkshire; Cranwell, Bedfordshire; and Telford, Shropshire. A further deluge is forecast to sweep across the country from the South West at the end of the week. Some parts of Britain had an entire month's worth of rain just in a few hours. The floods could cost the economy millions of pounds, as workers would likely turn up late at work in the coming days, if they manage to make it at all, due to disruptions on transport networks. The number of people in bad trouble was continuing to rise through the evening as reports came in of thousands of people being without power. Elsewhere in Britain rivers broke their banks, flooding roads and homes from Devon in southwest England, to Yorkshire in the north. AUSTRALIA - Melon growers in Western Australia's Ord region are facing massive losses after unseasonable, unexpected rain. More than 100 millimetres has fallen across parts of the Kimberley in the past week at the height of the melon picking season. "Some of them [melons] are really heavy, so they seem to be waterlogged. There's no water inside but you just don't know what to expect, because we haven't had this before. We're actually scared of the sun coming out in full force and we don't know how the plants will react to that, we've just got no idea because we've never had this before." TEXAS - Rainstorms accompanied by high winds swept across Texas on Monday, flooding streets, swelling creeks to near flood stage and damaging buildings. Three women died when their car slid on a wet highway and slammed into a truck in the hills west of Austin. Storms in North Texas were dropping five centimetres of rain an hour Monday afternoon. In Rhome, about 40 kilometres northwest of Fort Worth, straight-line winds blew over fences, damaged roofs and sent a metal pole crashing through the roof of one building. Sustained rainfall over the last month has left the ground saturated and parts of North, Central and East Texas are at high risks of flash flooding. The severe weather shows no sign of letting up, with chances of rain and thunderstorms as high as 90 per cent in some parts of Texas today. More rain is bringing another week of mild weather. "This is a RARE event. We are more in a mode representative of May or September. This year is pretty special." The rains are causing much more green plant growth than is usual for this time of year, helping to lower temperatures. HEAT / WILDFIRES / DROUGHT / CLIMATE CHANGE- Southern and eastern Europe & the Mediterranean - Temperatures were expected to reach 43 degrees Celsius (109.4 Fahrenheit) in some areas on Monday and will remain around that level during the week. Helicopters and specially adapted aircraft joined firefighters on the ground in southern Italy to fight a series of fires in Calabria and on the island of Sicily, as a heatwave there continued. The situation was particularly serious in Sicily, where according to media reports guests at a number of hotels near the northwest coast had to be evacuated. The fires were being fanned by the strong southerly winds known as the sirocco. A heatwave in Greece killed two pensioners at the weekend and pushed DEMAND FOR ELECTRICITY TO NEW ALL-TIME HIGHS. Hospitals around the country have been placed on alert and municipalities are keeping cooled public facilities open for those without air-conditioning at home, but heatstroke already claimed the lives of an 84-year-old woman in the western town of Egio and a 76-year-old man in Farsala, central Greece. On the island of Cyprus a 72-year-old woman died of heatstroke on Monday as the island sizzled in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The Mediterranean island is famed for its year-long sunshine but temperatures of 42 degrees now being recorded in the capital are EXTREME. In Romania the capital Bucharest and eight southern districts were placed on orange alerts as the temperature headed above 40 degrees Celsius. The heatwave that has already lasted several days has taken at least 25 lives. First aid tents have been erected in many cities while ambulance services have received thousands of calls.