Earth Changes
"Extremely severe" gusts have hammered the Arabian Peninsula, with three-years of rain dumped on a major Omani city in one day
A powerful cyclone has killed a 12-year-old girl and left at least nine other people dead as it battered parts of Oman and Yemen.
More than 30 people are missing on the Yemeni island of Socotra after it bore the brunt of Cyclone Mekunu, with gusts of up to 124mph reported.
Those missing include Yemeni, Indian and Sudanese nationals.
The 12-year-old girl is among three people who have been found dead in Oman, while seven people have been killed in Socotra, said officials from both affected countries.
A person died in Oman after a car drifted into a valley in the southern region of Dhofar in torrential rain, Royal Oman Police tweeted on Saturday.
More than 10 inches of rain has fallen in Oman's third largest city Salalah, with the deluge amounting to three years of its typical rainfall in one day.
The western tip of Florida's Panhandle was at the center of the projected impact zone and while Alberto's strongest winds were expected to stay well offshore until then, forecasters cautioned the path potentially could shift over the next few days. Either way, much of the state, including the Florida Keys and mainland South Florida, was likely in for a holiday weekend drenching from a storm that formed before hurricane season officially begins on June 1.
Along the the southwest coast, surf and surge could also pile seawater atop the rain. And once it does makes landfall, forecasters were concerned it could stall and trigger worse flooding.
"When it gets inland, it will be a slow mover, so this could be a horrific flooding event up there," National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said.
Unnoticed snake bite leads to the death of breastfeeding mother and her baby in Uttar Pradesh, India
The 35-year-old woman from Uttar Pradesh state did not realise she had been bitten when she woke and breastfed her daughter.
The three-year-old girl and the mother fell ill on Thursday and both died before they could reach hospital, police inspector Vijay Singh told AFP.
The family spotted the snake in another room but the creature escaped.
Sources
Comment: A day later from the same news source (Xinhua) came the following stunning photos:
Photo taken on May 25, 2018 shows tulips in snow at the Jiangbulake scenery spot in Qitai County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, May 25, 2018. A snowfall hit Qitai County on May 24. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)
Residents are also eyeing another disturbing development. After three weeks of gawking at images of bright red lava bursting skyward, the Big Island's focus has shifted to something blue and worrisome: blue flames that indicate the presence of methane gas. Methane gas is a result of the lava burning plants and trees. Scientists say it can trigger explosions if ignited while trapped underground.
"It's the first time, maybe the second time I've seen the blue flames thing. It's very dramatic, very eerie," geophysicist Jim Kauahikaua said.
A report on GMA News by Erwin Nicavera on Saturday identified the fatalities as Rubilyn Muedan, Glenn Gotual, Marites Garzon, and Renilda Villanueva (aged between 41 to 52).
An initial police investigation showed that the victims were working at sugarcane filed when a sudden, heavy rain came, forcing them to take shelter in a hut at the middle of the plantation.
Lightning struck the hut, killing four and hurting six others inside the shelter that had no walls, the police report said.
Four of the six wounded are still recuperating while the two have been discharged from the hospital.
Comment: On the same day 3 people were killed and 5 injured by single bolt in Bangladesh while in Kenya a strike killed a student and injured 21 others.

Projected Path
The red-shaded area denotes the potential path of the center of the system. It's important to note that impacts (particularly heavy rain, high surf, coastal flooding, winds) with any system usually spread beyond its forecast path.
While it's still way too early to tell if Alberto will gain enough steam as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend, there's a chance the storm could become the earliest land-falling hurricane on record.
Forecasts now call for top winds of 65 mph, 9 mph below the threshold for a Cat 1 hurricane, by Monday when it's near the north Gulf Coast. But shear is expected to drop, with some models opening a window just big enough for a more intense system to develop.
"This thing could become a hurricane," said AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dan Kottlowski, "and people should think about that possibility as it approaches the northern Gulf Coast."
If it does, Alberto would be the first since Alma appeared north of Panama in 1970 and briefly threatened the Caribbean for two days before fizzling south of Cuba.

An image grab taken from an AFPTV video shows people walking through flood water as they evacuate a flooded area during a cyclone in the Yemeni island of Socotra
Landfall occurred around midnight local time about 40 km west-southwest of Salalah, which is Oman's third-largest city, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls.
Mekunu became an extremely severe cyclonic storm with winds equal to a Category 3 hurricane in the Atlantic or east Pacific Ocean prior to making landfall.
A north to northwest track first brought life-threatening impacts to Socotra, as Mekunu passed just north of the island with waves of rain and wind.
A state of emergency was declared in Socotra, a Yemeni island located between the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula, after the storm flooded villages and left at least 40 missing on Thursday, according to the Daily News. Officials fear some of the missing are dead.
















Comment: Deadly Cyclone Mekunu lashes Oman, Yemen with flooding and high winds