Record floods in New Zealand claim at least four lives

Australian disaster relief experts will travel to New Zealand in the coming days after record floods swamped homes, inundated Auckland Airport, and claimed at least four lives.

Up to fifty centimetres of snow in the Tramuntana Mountains

© G. R. V.
Snow at the Cúber reservoir.

On Sunday morning, the met agency Aemet reported there having been up to fifty centimetres of snow over a 24-hour period at 1,200 metres in the Tramuntana Mountains.

In its 9am update, Aemet added that there had been 15 centimetres at 800 metres. The Council of Mallorca's roads department issued advice that the MA-10 between kilometre 29 and 45 (Sa Calobra-Ses Barques mirador) was still blocked.

The amber alert for heavy snow in the mountains will cease to be active from 10am on Sunday. However, the forecast for the mountains (in Escorca) for the rest of the day is for a high probability of precipitation with snow falling at 900 metres.

Afghanistan's cold snap death toll rises to 166

One hundred and sixty-six people have died in a wave of bitterly cold weather sweeping Afghanistan, an official said on Saturday, as extreme conditions heaped misery on the poverty-stricken nation.

Afghanistan has been frozen by temperatures as low as -33 degrees Celsius since Jan 10, combined with widespread snowfall, icy gales and regular electricity outages.

Aid agencies had warned before the cold snap that more than half of Afghanistan's 38 million people were facing hunger, while nearly four million children were suffering from malnutrition.

The disaster management ministry said on Saturday the death toll had risen by 88 over the past week and now stood at 166, based on data from 24 of the nation's 34 provinces.

The deaths were caused by floods, fires and leaks from gas heaters that Afghan families use to heat their homes, ministry official Abdul Rahman Zahid said in a video statement. Some 100 homes were destroyed or damaged and nearly 80,000 livestock, a vital commodity for Afghanistan's poor, also died in the cold.