With the dollar-led global economy on the verge of systemic collapse, increasing chaos in the political and social spheres is mirrored by climate chaos. In June 2015, thousands of wildfires broke out across western North America, with the entire continent on course for its fieriest season in recorded history. June is the peak of tornado season in the US, but the intensity of the storms that brought them was stunning. The worst death toll from a tornado occurred in central China, where a waterspout capsized a cruise ship on the Yangtze River.

The record May rainfall in Texas and Louisiana... just kept falling out of the sky last month, with the Red River reaching its highest level in 70 years. Parts of southern China also saw their worst flooding in over 70 years. Localized flash-flooding struck the world over, not least in Accra, capital of Ghana, where hundreds were killed when a gas station exploded. Tbilisi, Georgia, was similarly impacted when a 'wall of water' washed through, killing 20 people and half the city zoo's animals. Other capitals inundated in deluges last month include Ankara, Bangkok, and Madrid, while Oman saw 5 years' worth of rain... in a single day.

Intense monsoon rains last month also killed thousands of wild animals at a sanctuary in India, while thousands of pigs drowned in southern China's floods. Animal die-offs included millions of crabs on the Californian coast, and hundreds of thousands of antelope in Kazakhstan. The heatwave that killed thousands in India in May moved into Pakistan last month, where it killed some 1,200 people. In normally hot, dry climates, there were yet more bizarre scenes of inches - and sometimes FEET - of hail trapping cars on roads. While Alaska baked in record hot temperatures, Norway had five times more snow cover than normal for June.

In addition to auroras and noctilucent clouds being seen much further south than usual, strange objects or lights in the sky were caught on camera, including three objects leaving Earth's atmosphere. Strong seismic activity came in the form of another powerful eruption of Indonesia's Mount Sinabung, while Malaysia was hit with its strongest earthquake since 1976. There is also incredible footage of enormous sinkholes opening up across the US in June, swallowing moving cars, roads, driveways, backyards, and golf greens. And don't miss the eruption of multiple methane-infused mud geysers on another golf course in Canada!

There is still a lot of sea ice in Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay this week - more than average for this date - with slightly less than average in the Beaufort Sea. Past behaviour of Western and Southern Hudson Bay polar bears suggests the mean date that bears come ashore for the summer this year will be later than average due to the plentiful ice available, regardless of when polar bear biologists decide that "breakup" has occurred.

Hudson Bay, with almost 50% of the bay still covered in ice, has the third highest coverage this week since 1992 (after 2009 and 2004); Davis Strait has the highest coverage since 1992; and Foxe Basin and Baffin Bay have the highest coverage since 1998. For this week, the Beaufort Sea this week has the second highest coverage since 2006 (after 2013), and more ice than was present in 1971, 1982, 1987, 1988 and 1998 - among others.

Although data of the losses caused by the snowstorm last weekend are still being consolidated, regional deputy manager and head of the Civil Defense Operations Center Regional Emergency (COER), German Chaiña Quispe gave some preliminary scope.

He said that eight provinces received snowfall, with the hardest hit being San Antonio de Putina, Carabaya and Sandia.

Snow killed more than two thousand alpacas in Puno, while more than 2000 families and 73 thousand animals were harmed in the town of Ananea.

He added that the other affected districts are Quilcapunyo, Putina and Sina.

Thanks to Argiris Diamantis for this link

Rain in Albuquerque from 6 a.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Tuesday set a 24-hour record for the city, breaking a standard that dates to 1893 and positioning Albuquerque nicely for a wetter-than-average monsoon season.

"Pretty much all the climate indicators are calling for an average to above-average monsoon season," Brian Guyer, meteorologist with the Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service, said Tuesday.

In the first week, we've already had 60 percent of an average monsoon season, he said, so "I'm guessing we are headed to above average."

Albuquerque's official 24-hour rainfall total on Monday and Tuesday was 2.24 inches, besting the city's previous 24-hour total of 2.08 inches, set on Sept. 28, 1893.

That brings Albuquerque's total rain for the first week of this month to well over 2 inches. The average July rain total for Albuquerque is 1.5 inches, and the city's record total for the month is 4.9 inches, set in 1930. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, Albuquerque's total rainfall for the year was 6.60 inches, 3.14 inches above normal.

Monsoon season runs from July 1 through September 30. Guyer said that Albuquerque's average rainfall during the period is 3.79 inches and that the city got more than 8 inches of rain in its wettest monsoon seasons, in 1988 and 2006. By contrast, Guyer said, Albuquerque's driest monsoon season was in 1953, when there was only 1.1 inches of rain.

"Typically, the wettest weeks of the monsoon season are the last week of July and the first week in August," Guyer said.

Last week a tourist on a whale-watching trip in Faxaflói, just outside Reykjavík, was attempting to photograph a humpback whale when a bird interrupted the shot.

Upon further inspection, the bird was discovered to be an albatross, and likely an Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross, a rare sight so far north.

Bird-watching enthusiast Mike King shared the photo, taken by his nephew Jared Mein, on Twitter, where it was noticed by Birding Iceland.

"Albatrosses are rarely found in the Atlantic region of the northern hemisphere. The species that live in the Atlantic are all native to the southern hemisphere, and some are known to go into the northern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean. So this is a bird far outside of its normal territory," ornithologist Gunnar Þór Hallgrímsson told RÚV.

A powerful tornado ripped through the Mira community in northeastern Italy, a couple of miles west of Venice, near the Adriatic Sea. Unaccustomed to the phenomenon, the Italians were shocked, disconcerted and alarmed by the event.

A video posted on Facebook by Carlotta Menegazzo shows a classic cone-shaped whirlwind twisting across the town of 40,000 citizens, sucking up everything it can, damaging houses and businesses.


An eyewitness in a car made a video of the scene as debris lashed against the vehicle. The passengers in the car are arguing with the driver telling him he should drive away and get out of the tornado's path. But then they approach too close and the voices in the video start to become somewhat hysterical.

Residents of the capital can see a rare natural phenomenon
Finally. Elusive noctilucent clouds, nature is so not completely elucidated by science, lit up the capital on Wednesday night. Noctilucent clouds are the first of June to 15 July, at other times they do not see. This year, they were seen in the north of Russia and the Urals, and in Moscow - all was not and was not, and seemed to take place and the season without them. But suddenly bright, complex layered structure of noctilucent clouds appeared about 23 hours in the northwest. It was a really beautiful: the left is still a young moon, the right calling Venus and Jupiter, and between them as though someone has sketched out a silver wool.

On the noctilucent clouds science for a long time I did not pay attention. But in mid-June 1908 in the Tunguska meteorite struck the earth, which is still hotly debated. In St. Petersburg, after his fall came the night suddenly so light that even accustomed to the night light Petersburgers were stunned. The light came from the unknown clouds. When the researchers calculated the distance to them, it turned out that they hang over the planet at an altitude of 80 km! That is already far into the stratosphere! Where there is a cloud?

Check out this awesome viewer video of a waterspout spinning off the coast of Boynton Beach -- sent to us by Melanie Calise on our WPBF 25 News Facebook page!

The funnel clouds over water tend to occur due to friction over the water and usually happen with very light winds, like those in play this morning.

They spin up typically from cumulonimbus clouds. They are small, rotating columns of air over water.

Residents from the Southern Plains to the Ohio Valley could see more dangerous flash flooding again Wednesday, forecasters say.

On Tuesday, heavy storms dumped hours-worth of rain in pockets across these regions. First responders pulled people from vehicles and homes in three separate states: Texas, Kentucky and Missouri.

Downpours slammed Indianapolis on Tuesday evening, prompting evacuations west of the city.

Here's the very latest from the impacted states:

Indiana

Nearly 4.5 inches of rain was recorded at the Indianapolis International Airport Tuesday afternoon, according to weather.com meteorologist Linda Lam, breaking a 100-year-old record. The city of Plainfield, just west of the airport, received 5.4 inches in less than four hours.

Wayne Township was hard hit. WISH TV reported about 20 homes were flooded and up to 60 people were evacuated.

"We have multiple homes affected by flood waters," Lt. Troy Wymer of the Wayne Township Fire Department told the Indianapoils Star. "The water is rising pretty rapidly."

A 6-year-old boy died after being attacked by a dog Tuesday at a North Carolina home, deputies said.

The incident was reported around 4:15 p.m. near Hendersonville, sister station WYFF reported. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene.

Henderson County deputies said the dog, which they identified as a pit bull, was so aggressive that they had to shoot and kill the animal before getting to the child.

Emergency officials also had to push down a fence to get to the child, deputies said.