Flash floods have killed at least 66 people and destroyed hundreds of houses in Afghanistan, the Government said.
Hundreds of livestock have also been destroyed by the flooding, caused by torrential rain in northern and western Afghanistan, said the head of the National Disaster Management Authority for the region.
"Twenty-three people have died in Badghis, 21 in Ghor and another 22 in Herat province,'' said Abdul Hameed Mubariz Hameedi, referring to the three worst-hit provinces.
The Afghan government and the United Nations have sent relief teams to the affected areas, which are among the poorest in the country.
Natural disasters are common in mountainous Afghanistan, where more than 200 people lost their lives in heavy avalanches earlier this year.
Earth Changes
Fierce thunderstorms have uprooted trees and destroyed hundreds of homes, crushing dozens of people to death and injuring scores of others in northern India.
At least 43 people were killed and 70 hurt in the deluge and squalls.
The powerful storms slashed a wide swath across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, uprooting trees and power pylons and damaging homes and crops.
In eastern Uttar Pradesh, 21 people were killed and about 50 others injured when heavy rains lashed the region, police spokesman Surendra Srivastava said.
"A majority of the victims were crushed under uprooted trees or when houses collapsed due to the squall,'' he said.
At least 43 people were killed and 70 hurt in the deluge and squalls.
The powerful storms slashed a wide swath across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, uprooting trees and power pylons and damaging homes and crops.
In eastern Uttar Pradesh, 21 people were killed and about 50 others injured when heavy rains lashed the region, police spokesman Surendra Srivastava said.
"A majority of the victims were crushed under uprooted trees or when houses collapsed due to the squall,'' he said.
Locals felt their houses shaking and heard loud bangs as the mini-quake, measuring 2.6 on the Richter scale, hit north Clare on Thursday night.
Liscannor resident Martin Doyle said: "I felt the whole roof shake. I thought the wall was collapsing. My neighbour called and he thought that the sound he heard was me falling down the stairs."
Rosemarie Buckley, who lives nearby, also said: "The house shook and we heard a loud bang."
Her husband Tom added: "We didn't know what it was. We thought it might have been a meteorite or something."
© USGS
Earthquake Location
Earthquake Location
Saturday, May 08, 2010 at 03:22:11 UTC
Saturday, May 08, 2010 at 11:22:11 AM at epicenter
Location:
8.122°S, 118.238°E
Depth:
20.1 km (12.5 miles)
Distances:
65 km (40 miles) NW of Bima, Sumbawa, Indonesia
240 km (150 miles) ENE of Mataram, Lombok, Indonesia
280 km (175 miles) NW of Waingapu, Sumba, Indonesia
1275 km (790 miles) E of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
A group of British scientists working off Ellef Ringnes Island, near the North Pole, reported being hit with a three-minute rain shower over the weekend. The group reported the rain on Tuesday.
Rain in the High Arctic in April is nothing short of bizarre, said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.
"My business is weird, wild and wacky weather, and this is up there among fish falling from the sky or Niagara Falls running dry," Phillips told CBC News in an interview that aired Thursday.
"I mean, it really is strange. You just don't expect it to rain in the High Arctic in April; maybe in July and August. And certainly for these scientists from Europe coming over, they must have been also mystified."
Phillips said 50 to 60 years of historical weather data show no signs of rainfall ever occurring in April in the High Arctic.
The earliest account of measurable rainfall at Canadian Forces Station Alert took place on May 21, 1988, he said.
© China Daily
A traffic policeman directs vehicles on a flooded downtown road in Xinhua county of Hunan province on Thursday. At least four people were killed there and many other roads flooded in the torrential rains.
A traffic policeman directs vehicles on a flooded downtown road in Xinhua county of Hunan province on Thursday. At least four people were killed there and many other roads flooded in the torrential rains.
As of 4 pm on Thursday, 29 people had died in the Dianjiang and Liangping counties as well as Fuling district of Chongqing municipality, with one other person missing, local government sources said.
Similarly, torrential rain that started at 2 am on Thursday in Xinhua county of Hunan province also killed four people and left one other person missing, authorities said.
The rains also triggered massive landslides and mudslides.
The extreme weather that started on Wednesday night in Chongqing had left 190 people injured as of 3:45 pm on Thursday.
The storms hit seven counties in Chongqing, with Hanjia and Pengshui reporting rainfall of up to 157 mm in the 24 hours to noon on Thursday, while wind speeds of up to 112 km per hour lashed worst-hit Dianjiang and Liangping.
"The trees in front of my house were uprooted or broke into half. My house roof, which was made of steel boards, was also ripped apart," said Liangping resident Huang Hongzhi.
"I have never seen it this bad before," he told China Daily.
© CFP
Lightning illuminates the sky during a thunderstorm in Qingyuan, South China's Guangdong province, May 6, 2010.
Lightning illuminates the sky during a thunderstorm in Qingyuan, South China's Guangdong province, May 6, 2010.
As of Friday, the storms had affected up to 2.55 million people and 100,000 hectares of arable land, leaving 65 people dead, 14 missing, 9,900 buildings damaged, said the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters in a statement on its website.
Heavy rain has poured down in south China since Wednesday, including provinces of Guangdong, Sichuan and Guizhou, causing floods, mountain torrents and mud flows.
The office initiated a level-four emergency response on Friday to cope with the chaos caused by storms sweeping its southern provinces.
The office has ordered local authorities to closely monitor the development of the rainstorms, prevent weather-triggered disasters like floods and landslides and provide early warnings.
The office has also dispatched working teams to storm-hit regions to enhance storm-relief work, it said.
© AP
Activity from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano has increased, taking the ash plume to a height over 30,000ft
Activity from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano has increased, taking the ash plume to a height over 30,000ft
The warning came just hours after all UK and Irish airspace re-opened yesterday following two days of disruption centred on Scotland, Ireland and the North of England.
It also came as the Icelandic volcano at the heart of the problem yesterday increased the amount of ash it is belching out.
© NASA/Goddard/MODIS Rapid Response Team
NASA's Terra satellite flew over the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano, Iceland, on May 6 at 11:55 UTC (7:55 a.m. EDT). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument known as MODIS that flies onboard Terra, captured a visible image of the ash plume. The plume was blowing east then southeast over the Northern Atlantic. The satellite image shows that the plume is at a lower level in the atmosphere than the clouds that lie to its east, as the brown plume appears to slide underneath the white clouds.
NASA's Terra satellite flew over the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano, Iceland, on May 6 at 11:55 UTC (7:55 a.m. EDT). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument known as MODIS that flies onboard Terra, captured a visible image of the ash plume. The plume was blowing east then southeast over the Northern Atlantic. The satellite image shows that the plume is at a lower level in the atmosphere than the clouds that lie to its east, as the brown plume appears to slide underneath the white clouds.
The authority said shifting winds, currently coming from the north, had bundled recent days' erupted ash into a massive cloud that is growing both in width and height by the hour.
Eurocontrol, which determines the air routes that airliners can use in and around Europe, says the ash accumulation is posing a new navigational obstacle - because the cloud is gradually climbing to 35,000 feet (10.5 kilometers) and into the typical cruising altitude of trans-Atlantic aircraft. Until recent days, the ash had remained below 20,000 feet (6 kilometers).
The Irish Aviation Authority said the engine-wrecking ash would skirt Ireland's western shores Friday, forcing a half-dozen airports to ground flights for much of the day. However, the airports in Dublin, Cork in the southwest and Waterford in the southeast will remain open.
"The restrictions are required as the increased level of recent volcanic activity has created a massive ash cloud stretching 1,000 miles long and 700 miles wide," the authority said in a statement.
Comment: There was another related report about freak snowing in Antarctica nearly two years ago:
Something Strange is Happening at the Coldest, Driest Place on Earth