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Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Super rare March snow for North Africa, southern Spain and French beaches
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NYC hasn't seen snow like this in 130 years
For most New Yorkers, the snow was probably a drag. For a record seeker like myself, this late season snow storm allowed me to catch my snow white whale.
This marks the fifth consecutive season that at least 30 inches of snow have fallen in New York City. The only other recorded time it snowed this much, for this long a period, was back in the 1880s (records begin in the 1869-1870 season). That five-year stretch occurred mostly during the presidential administration of Chester A. Arthur, another president who made a name for himself in New York.
As of 8 p.m., 6.7 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park in Manhattan, the official measurement site for snow in Manhattan. More snow has fallen since then, but that alone put New York over 30 inches of snow for the season. Before the storm, New York City had only 27 inches of snow recorded for the season.
Heavy rains fell on Thursday and is expected to continue in most parts of the province into the weekend.
The inclement has already claimed the lives of a mother and her three children when lightning struck their home in eNgonyameni in the Jozini local municipality in the northern part of the province. The father was injured and taken to the nearest hospital and is in a critical condition.
Reacting to the incident, Nomusa Dube-Ncube, Cogta MEC, expressed her dismay at this occurrence as yet another family has lost its loved ones due to bad weather.
Flooding in São Paulo
The storm began during the afternoon of 20 March and brought lightning strikes and strong winds, as well as heavy rain.
Brazil's Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia (INMET) says that around 50 mm of rain was recorded in Sao Paulo's Mirante de Santana weather station between 20 and 21 March 2018.
The storm downed more than 80 trees across the city. São Paulo Civil Defense reported over 50 incidents of flooding. Levels of the Pinheiros river that runs through the city remain high after the storm.
According to a National Police report, four men and a four-year-old girl were struck and killed by lightning in Prey Veng, Koh Kong, Battambang and Kratie province on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The report said Doung Sarath, 50, was killed on Wednesday evening in Prey Veng province's Peamchor district when he was walking to a rice field about 800 metres from his home to bring his cow in from the rain.
© Chris Wattie/ReutersLocal residents look inside a collapsed coastal house in the wake of Hurricane Irma in Vilano Beach, Florida.
Lloyd's of London has posted its first loss in six years, after what the insurer described as "one of the costliest years for natural catastrophes in the past decade".
The iconic insurance market reported an overall pre-tax loss of £2bn for last year, down from a profit of £2.1bn the year before, despite gross written premiums climbing to £33.6bn from £29.9bn.
Major claims in 2017 were more than double the cost of the previous year, at £4.5bn, which led to an underwriting loss of £3.4bn, compared with profit of £500m in 2016.
This led the group's combined ratio to deteriorate to 114 per cent from 97.9 per cent - a combined ratio of less than 100 per cent means a firm is profitable.
A series of huge storms in the second half of 2017, including Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, left homes and businesses across the south coast of the US and the Caribbean destroyed.
Earthquakes in Mexico and wildfires in California added to the financial losses due to natural disasters, with one study putting the total cost of global disasters last year at $306bn (£218bn).
Comment: The costs of natural disasters are likely to increase in the coming years. See also: World sees rapid upsurge in extreme weather says report
According to the Police Public Relations Officer for Mulanje, Gresham Ngwira, the deceased are Frank Smart and James Lipenga who both hail from Mothiwa Village in the area of senior chief Mabuka in Mulanje.
Ngwira has told Malawi24 that the incident occurred on Tuesday 20th March 2017 in the noon hours and the two were pronounced dead upon arrival at Mulanje District Hospital.
"The incident happened Tuesday at around afternoon at Lauderdale trading centre following rains accompanied by thunder and lightning.
A Category Four hurricane which slammed into the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 2016 triggered major floods
In Europe, where precise data reaches back decades, the number of severe floods has jumped five fold since 1995, according to the report, which updates a 2013 assessment.
"There has been, and continues to be, a significant increase in the frequency of extreme weather events," said Michael Norton, environmental programme director for the European Academies' Science Advisory Council.
"They underline the importance of avoiding greenhouse gases, which are fundamentally responsible for driving these changes," he told AFP.
Comment: And still they continue to push the man-made climate change/global warming lie despite over 31K scientists having signed a petition against the global warming agenda.
For impacts that cannot be avoided, he added, "this makes climate proofing all the more urgent."
In Europe, efforts to shore up defences against river flooding have proven effective: despite an increase in frequency of such events, economic loses on the continent have remained static.
"Rather than just coping with disasters after they strike, we need to shift to proactive management of all drivers of risks," commented Munich Climate Insurance Initiative director Soenke Kreft, who did not contribute to the report.
In the United States, however, the damage wrought by storms doubled, on average, from $10 billion in 1980 to $20 billion in 2015, adjusted for inflation, according to the report, based in part on data from insurance giant Munich Re's NatCatSERVICE.
The update also assessed new findings on possible changes in the Gulf Stream, powerful ocean currents running between the Arctic region and the Caribbean that warm the air in northwestern Europe and the US eastern seaboard.
Comment: For more information on extreme weather from around the world, check out our Earth Changes Summaries. The latest video: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - February 2018: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs
To understand how and why these extreme weather events are occurring read Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
© REUTERS/Gene Blevins (UNITED STATES)
Martha Hart Mulligan was traveling home from North Carolina on Monday as the tempest hit. The pilot of American Airlines pilot flight 5566 reportedly took the long way around to avoid the storm system but it proved too big to escape as the footage shows. No-one on board was injured and the flight landed safely that evening.
"We were trying to fly south of the storm to avoid some turbulence. This is the impressive lightning we encountered, and we're happy to report that it did not 'encounter' us," Hart Mulligan wrote on Facebook.
Comment: As reported on the 21st of March several lightning strikes have also killed 4 people in Uttar Pradesh, India: