Floods
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Cloud Lightning

Massive storm floods Edmonton streets - Lightning, Hail damage homes

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© Chris BienschHail stones from Thursday's storm are shown next to a ping pong ball.
A severe thunderstorm has flooded streets, yards, basements and construction sites in Edmonton. Sections of Whitemud Drive are underwater at 111th Street west of Calgary Trail. City workers arrived shortly after 7:30 a.m. to begin clearing the water.

Dharminder Gill told CBC News he was driving to work at 3 a.m.when his car stalled in the rising water. Within five minutes the water was waist deep, he said, and when he opened his window to escape the water began pouring in.

"I was scared," he said. "I took my bag and ran through the water and moved to a safe place."

The normally busy Mill Woods intersection at 66 Street and 34 Avenue is also flooded.

Firefighters spent much of the morning rescuing people from submerged vehicles, with at least 18 cars becoming trapped due to rainstorm, and responding to alarms set off by the storm.

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Cloud Lightning

20 Inches of Rain Cause Flash floods in Japan leaving trail of destruction


An unprecedented 20 inches of rain descended on the town of Aso in southwestern Japan, inundating homes and rice paddies and killing at least 6 people. 20 people are still reportedly missing.

Images on local news reports showed cars being dragged into the raging rivers and houses destroyed by landslides. But by around noon time the rain had stopped, allowing for the clean up efforts to kick in.

The local fire department in Aso District said they had managed to rescue 8 people trapped in mudslides.

Cloud Lightning

Devastating India floods kill threatened rhinos

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© Bobosh_t/FlickrOne-horned rhino.
Devastating floods in northeast India have killed around 600 animals in the region's largest wildlife park, including more than a dozen threatened one-horned rhinos, officials said July 9. "Most of the animals either drowned or were mown down by speeding vehicles when they tried to flee the heavy flooding," said S.K. Bora, director of 430-square-kilometre (165-square-mile) Kaziranga National Park in Assam state. "The water level is now receding, but the vast majority of animals that fled the park are yet to return," he told AFP by telephone.

According to Bora, various species of deer accounted for more than 500 of the animal victims, which also included 14 rhinos and two elephant calves. Assam has been the focus of severe regional flooding in recent weeks, triggered by heavy monsoon rains that caused the Brahmaputra river to burst its banks, inundating large areas of the state.

Bizarro Earth

Russia continues to bury the dead, clean up after floods in Krasnodar

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© AP Photo/Ignat KozlovA local resident stands at a flooded house in Krimsk, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south of Moscow, Russia, Sunday, July 8, 2012. The death toll from severe flooding in the Black Sea region of southern Russia has risen to at least 150.
Authorities failed to properly warn residents in the Black Sea region of floods that killed at least 171 people and left others scrambling for safety, Russia's emergencies minister acknowledged Monday, adding to public outrage fueled by widespread mistrust of the government. Monday has been declared a national day of mourning in Russia. Families of the flood victims were beginning to bury the dead in the hard-hit town of Krymsk, where torrential rain and flooding turned streets into swirling muddy rivers, inundated thousands of homes and forced people to flee from their beds in the middle of the night. Nearly 19,000 people have lost all their belongings.

Monday has been declared a national day of mourning in Russia. Families of the flood victims were beginning to bury the dead in the hard-hit town of Krymsk, where torrential rain and flooding turned streets into swirling muddy rivers, inundated thousands of homes and forced people to flee from their beds in the middle of the night. Nearly 19,000 people have lost all their belongings.

The Emergencies Ministry said it sent warnings out by text message, but some local residents said they never received the alerts. Ministry head Vladimir Puchkov acknowledged under pressure that they were insufficient to reach everyone on time.

"A system to warn the residents was set up," Puchkov said at a government meeting where he was grilled by the deputy prime minister about the early Saturday flood. "But, unfortunately, not everyone was warned early enough."

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Cloud Lightning

Flash Flood Warning - Texas community absorbs 10 inches of rain in a few hours

A community just outside of Austin, Texas, was pounded by about 10 inches of rain over a few hours early Tuesday, causing flash floods and leaving at least 15 residences surrounded by water, a Texas emergency management official told CNN.

Webberville, Texas, near the western edge of Bastrop County, received about 10 inches of rain starting around 5 a.m., according to Mike Fisher, the county's emergency management coordinator.

"Residents at the end of the subdivision are our concern right now, if anybody's home," Fisher said around midmorning, before the water started receding.

At least four residences were evacuated, but it was unclear how many people were affected by the flooding, he said.

"It was a slow-moving thunderstorm that came through in that one particular little spot of Webberville," Fisher said.

By 12:30 p.m. the water had receded and everything was "back to normal," said Sue Cerf of emergency management department. No one was injured, she said.

Cloud Lightning

Torrential Rain - Scotland put on weather alert as heavy rain and floods are set to cause chaos

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© UnknownParts of Edinburgh have already been flooded this week
Torrential rain could chaos traffic chaos and flooding across Scotland in the next 36 hours - with Edinburgh and East Lothian set to be hit hardest.

The Met Office have issued rain alerts for most of Scotland, including an Amber Warning of likely flooding covering South West Scotland and the Lothian and Borders area.

The Scottish Environmental Portection Agency say Edinburgh and East Lothian in particular could be badly hit on Wednesday as river levels rise.

A Yellow Warning of potential flooding has also been issued for Central, Tayside, Fife and Strathclyde.

Transport Minister Keith Brown said: "Unfortunately some of those communities who were caught up in the heavy rain in over Edinburgh and the Lothians at the weekend are now being warned to expect more testing conditions over the next 24 to 36 hours.

Cloud Lightning

Floods damage Russian grain export routes

Floods that hit Russia's Black Sea coast have wrought chaos on major road and rail links to its main grain export outlet, but stocks at the port of Novorossiisk are high and may delay any impact on exports, traders and analysts said on Monday.

The effects were likely to be short-lived but laid bare the infrastructure risks faced by Russia as it attempts to secure and strengthen its status as a dominant global wheat exporter by exploiting its vast reserves of farmland.

Russian Railways said it had halted rail traffic to the port of Novorossiisk to repair a bridge southwest of Krymsk, the town hardest hit when floodwaters came crashing down suddenly in the early hours of Saturday, killing at least 171 people.

The state rail operator said the rail bed also was washed out in places. Later in the day it said traffic had resumed between Krymsk and Novorossiisk, but only southbound trains were moving and passenger trains had priority.

The Russian government has an ambitious target for grain exports to rise to 40 million tonnes a year. Russia emerged from a catastrophic drought in the 2010/11 crop year to export a record 28 million tonnes in the year to June 2012, IKAR analysts said on Monday.

The biggest obstacle to export growth is infrastructure. Novorossiisk, the main grain export port, has two terminals that are linked to the wheat fields north of the Caucasus mountain foothills by a single rail link and by mountain roads.

Phoenix

First fire then rain: Colorado on Flash flood watch

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© Chris Morriss/7NEWSFlooding in the Denver Metro area on Monday 9 July
Sunday will mark the third day of heavy rains for much of the Front Range. According to 7News, many areas have received 2-3 inches of rain already since Friday, more than an inch could fall on Sunday and more showers are expected into Monday.

The good news: Fire danger is dramatically lower thanks to all this rain.

The bad news: Most of central Colorado is now under flood watch, according to the National Weather Service.

Denver saw heavy rains on Saturday and should see more on Sunday. 9News reports that on Saturday afternoon at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival the downpour destroyed tents, signs and streets filled with water. A lightning strike even set fire to a power line in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Comment: Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction


Cloud Lightning

Flooding and heavy rains lash Cape Town - more on the way

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© David RitchieCars negotiate a flooded M3
Heavy rains in Cape Town on Sunday flooded roads and houses and caused the Liesbeek River to burst its banks, and there were "extreme weather" warnings of bitter cold over much of the country.

The M3 was flooded where the road dips near UCT, and traffic was backed up as motorists slowed down to plough through the muddy waters.

Many shacks on the Cape Flats were flooded and the city council and charity organisations provided hot meals, blankets and plastic sheeting to about 350 families.

The SA Weather Service said on Sunday's cold front had been particularly strong, adding that the cold, wet weather was here to stay for the next few days.

The weather office said westerly winds at Cape Point reached near gale force of 55km/h on Sunday morning, while there were rough seas with heavy swells between 4m and 5m from Lamberts Bay to the southern Cape coast.

The city council's disaster risk management centre ordered about 60 people to evacuate the River Club premises for their safety on Sunday after rising flood waters from the Liesbeek had inundated the club's parking lot and courtyard.

Ambulance

Devastating India floods leave 95 dead, millions homeless

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© AFP / Getty Images Villagers padddle with their belongings through flood waters in the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, 55 kms from the capital city of the northeastern state of Assam on June 28, 2012. Floodwaters have submerged 90% of the sanctuary.
Flooding described by India's prime minister as the worst in recent times, has left at least 95 people dead and almost 2 million others homeless in the country's remote Assam state.

The Brahmaputra river overflowed during monsoon rains over the past week, flooding more than 2,000 villages and destroying homes in the northeast of the country, officials said.

Most of the dead were swept away by the fast-flowing water, while 16 were reported to have been buried by landslides caused by the heavy rains.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told journalists Monday that almost half a million people were living in relief camps, and the remaining of the displaced were staying with relatives or living in the open, using tarpaulin sheets for shelter.

Sabir Ali, who lives in one of the affected villages, had to move his family to higher ground with only what they could carry. "I am stuck. How will I survive? I've been forced to move to railways tracks with my children," he told CNN-IBN.

But water levels have begun to recede, and thousands have returned to damaged homes. A report issued on Tuesday lowered the number of evacuees to 370,000. Assam's State Disaster Management Authority reported that at least 14 people are missing.