Earth Changes
An aerial view of the flood-affected Darbhanga district of Bihar on Wednesday.
The flood situation in Bihar deteriorated on Wednesday as waters from overflowing rivers originating in Nepal inundated fresh areas and the number of affected people rose to 66.60 lakh across 16 districts, a government bulletin said.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar made an aerial survey of the affected areas of north Bihar and visited a village in Darbhanga district, which has been hit by the calamity.
According to the Wilmington Police Department, the incident happened in the 6200 block of North Bradley Overlook in the Bradley Creek area around 11:50 a.m.
The homeowner, 77-year-old Ralph Thomas Wallace, and his friend, 42-year-old Moo Saw Kefauver, were both pronounced dead at the scene.
A nearby house also suffered damage from the strike, including a small attic fire, but no one was injured.
Storms have brought floods and mudslides to Mumbai as well as causing the collapse of three cranes at JNPT.
Heavy rainfall has hit India's west coast since Monday night, flooding parts of the financial capital. Wind speeds picked up on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.
No one was injured when the cranes collapsed at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Kumar said in a Tweet.
The port is still assessing the impact of the collapse on the operations, its chairman, Sanjay Sethi, told Reuters.
Reuters
This is the heaviest spell of rain in the financial capital since 2005, Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray told NDTV.
"198 mm rain in four hours is a huge amount of rain. Any city in the world will collapse with such rain," Mr Thackeray said. The local trains, a lifeline for Mumbai's 20 million residents, have been stopped in the city and all offices, except emergency services are closed.
Mumbai and a few neighbouring district are on red alert for "extremely heavy rainfall" today and tomorrow. Apart from Mumbai, the alert has been issued for Thane, Pune, Raigad and Ratnagiri districts of Maharashtra. The rain and its severe impact come at a time Mumbai is struggling with coronavirus cases.
Dead humpback whale on Platforms beach in Aptos.
"State Parks is evaluating expedient ways of removing the dead whale from the beach," he said. "We are working in conjunction with Long Marine Lab and NOAA."
State Parks advised the public to stay away from the whale and view from afar to ensure safety.
On Tuesday, the whale remained at the beach. McKenna confirmed that they are monitoring the weather and tides to determine when they can safely tow the whale back out to sea, likely later this week.
© Sony Ramany
Two children swim to fetch fresh water as a woman looks on in a flood-hit area of Lauhajang upazila in Munshiganj on Tuesday.
Two children swim to fetch fresh water as a woman looks on in a flood-hit area of Lauhajang upazila in Munshiganj on Tuesday.
Over four lakh people got freshly affected by flood over the Eid holidays as the total number of flood victims crossed 5.5 million until Tuesday, 39 days after the monsoon flood hit in late June, with 145 flood-related deaths so far.
Government disaster responders and flood victims said that the overall flood situation remained largely unchanged except for the rapid deterioration in the flood situation in parts of north as India continued to release huge volumes of water through two barrages built in Uttar Dinajpur.
A Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre report showed that 17 rivers flowed above their danger marks at 27 places as their water levels registered a slow fall over the 24 hours until 9:00am Tuesday.
The epicenter, with a depth of 174.75 km, was initially determined to be at 16.1118 degrees south latitude and 168.0816 degrees east longitude.
This figure of lightning strike victims in the state till June this year is more than what it was during the entire year in 2019, an official said.
"In the current monsoon season, the threat of lightning strikes has increased as compared to last year due to the environmental changes," India Meteorological Department (IMD) senior scientist, Vedprakash Singh Chandel, told PTI on Wednesday.
"Because of this, the wind speed during thunderstorm and hailstorm was found significantly high," he said.
According to the official, in the last six months- from January to June- 89 people were killed in lightning strikes, as compared to 82 in entire 2019.
Australia's ever-intensifying Antarctic Blast is beginning to deliver. This morning (Aug 5), swathes of Tasmania received their first settling snow for 40 years.
As picked up by Yahoo News Australia, Tasmania's riverside city of Launceston was hammered by snow on Tuesday evening, as the mercury at the airport sank below-zero just after 9pm.
Bureau of Meteorology's Matthew Thomas said the settling snow in Tasmania's north is a weather event not seen for some 40 years.
"It's a very rare event for Tasmania," said Thomas.
"We saw some snow settled in Hobart, with the last two occurrences in 1986 and 2015. [However] the last time we saw snow settle in Launceston was in the early 1970s," he said.
Weatherzone meteorologist Ben Domensino described it as "a historic event for Tasmania":
Comment: Less than a week ago a giant crane collapsed at another Indian shipyard killing at least 11 people.