Winds above 74 miles per hour in hills above 2500 feet, and 80 miles per hour in the mountains are forecast for Thursday in what could be the storm of the decade according to Bay Area meteorologists.

The computer models are able to break down the exact time of highest danger. By mid-morning Thursday, models indicate winds peaking at 74 miles per hour sustained, not gusts, above 2500 feet. Above 5,000 feet the forecast is for 80 miles per hour. Along the coast, 60 mile per hour winds are forecasts, with higher gusts. The flatter areas around the bay will have widespread gusts from 40 to 50 miles per hour.

KPIX 5 chief meteorologist Paul Deanno said, "Given the long-term drought and short-term saturated ground, many trees will lose the battle with the wind on Thursday."

Deanno compares this week's storms to other significant events saying, "For those of us who have lived here for a while, the potential of this storm is comparable to the ones in January 2008 and February 1998, both of which caused widespread wind & flooding damage. As always, the forecast can change."

The National Weather Service has issued a whopping 15 separate warnings and advisories for the system including a Flash Flood Watch, Gale Warning, Hazardous Seas Advisory, and High Wind Watch.

Rainfall amounts above eight inches are forecast for the coastal ranges, triggering the Flash Flood Watch, an official notice to be looking for potential flooding. During the storm, these alerts will change from watches to warnings as actual floods begin occurring.

A hurricane, though only used to refer to tropical storms, is declared when sustained winds reach 74 miles per hour, and that level of wind is predicted for Thursday, along with rainfal amounts of over half an inch per hour, and if the storm slows, it could reach one inch per hour, causing serious flooding in the Bay Area.

The death toll from Typhoon Hagupit, the latest natural disaster to hit the Philippines, has risen to 27; around 2,500 homes have been totally or partially destroyed by the storm, which is losing its destructive force and weakening into a tropical storm.

According to Reuters, 27 people have been killed and around 2,500 homes have been totally or partially destroyed by Typhoon Hagupit in the Philippines.

"We now have a total of 27 dead, most of them in Borongan, in Eastern Samar," the news agency quotes Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross as saying, adding that most of the dead drowned in floodwaters.

The radar image says it all. A big blob of red, yellow and blue heading your way.

If you've been in Canberra, Sydney or Brisbane in recent days and weeks, you've seen storms just about every afternoon.

This weekend, more thunderstorms, hail and powerful winds are expected in New South Wales set to last until early next week. Saturday is likely to be the worst day with heavy rains across one third of the state.

It comes after three days of severe weather in New South Wales that saw the State Emergency Service receive about 300 calls for help overnight and has led to thousands of volunteers being put on standby.

Around half a million people fled coastal villages and landslide-prone areas in the central Philippines on Friday, a day before a powerful typhoon was expected to hit the island nation where thousands died in a storm 13 months ago.

Typhoon Hagupit weakened slightly as it churned slowly across the Pacific, dipping below the category 5 "super typhoon" level, the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA said, but was likely to remain destructive when it hit land on Saturday.

Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific cancelled more than 150 flights to central and southern Philippines on Friday and Saturday. Ports shut across the archipelago after the coastguard suspended sea travel.

"Over 100,000 families are already in evacuation centers," said Corazon Soliman, Social Welfare secretary. "Multiply it by five (persons per family), that's 500,000," she said, adding that most of the residents had volunteered to leave.

The snow is up to 3 feet (90 cm) deep, leaving residents struggling to open doors.

A blizzard lasting more than 60 hours hit Fuyuan County, a border town in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Thursday.

Local communities banded together to clear snow from roads, and the county government said a contingency plan is in place to relieve economic stresses due to the snow.

In the last few hours on Wednesday afternoon, all access to the Hohe Wand was cut off by ice-covered boulders and broken tree branches, as a result of the ice storm.

Police and fire departments were busy all morning visiting residents living in the area to ask them to leave their homes, many of which are threatened by falling trees.

Some residents left voluntarily, while others refused to leave. Some elderly residents had to be evacuated for medical reasons.

Rain pelted the Bay Area for the fifth consecutive day on Tuesday, leading to a flurry of car wrecks, flooding and mudslide watches amid an otherwise welcome break from California's severe drought.

Flashing lights and sirens were common on the highways, with crashes reported before the sun came up on Interstate Highway 880 in Hayward and Highway 17 near Santa Cruz.. Flooding appeared in parts of San Francisco, including on northbound Interstate 280 at the Cesar Chavez offramp and the Ellis onramp at southbound U.S. Highway 101, which had a puddle that stretched 40 feet long and 15 feet wide.

About 40,000 homes on the outskirts of Budapest went without electricity on Tuesday as freezing rain blanketed the area and falling trees cut power lines, Hungary's Disaster Relief Agency said.

Heavy branches fell and entire trees toppled as ice as thick as 10 centimeters (4 inches) coated them, threatening entire forests in altitudes above 400 meters, according to people who ventured to higher-lying areas.

Forestry services closed off large tracts of land located higher than 400 meters above sea level to prevent injuries. No deaths or injuries have been reported.

One forestry worker who visited the Borzsony Mountains north of Budapest said the woods echoed with loud cracks and hissing sounds as branches and trunks gave way under tons of ice.

The fire service was called out more than 200 times over the weekend in the district of Zwettl (Lower Austria) as a rare ice storm hit the region, bringing chaos with layers of frozen ice in trees.

Firefighters have been busy clearing away hundreds of trees from the vicinity of homes and power lines. The trees' branches had been bent almost double by the weight of the ice. The area near Ottenschlag has particularly been hit hard. A combination of very low temperatures and high humidity caused many layers of thick frost to form into heavy ice.

Motorists in the region have been asked to exercise extreme caution due to icy conditions on the roads. Northeast Fire Department spokesman Franz Resperger described on Sunday how many trees were destroyed by the ice, including some with trunks more than a meter in diameter.

As southern France recovers from the worst flooding it's seen in years, The Local takes a look at some of the most shocking images of the damage done by the forces of nature. The latest victim was a 73-year-old man who died of heart failure in Rivesaltes, in the Pyrenees-Orientales region, when trying to force his car through a big dip in a road that was flooded.

Along the banks of the Agly river in the same region, some 2,800 people had been evacuated by late afternoon Sunday, the government office there said. The flooding was considered already more serious than deadly overflows in 1999 and "we are evacuating residents within 200 metres (yards) of either side of the river," the government said.

The prime minister's office dubbed the flooding "exceptional" in a statement but said "the situation is under control."