Storms
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Cloud Lightning

Britain to see month's rain in one night as severe weather warnings issued

Severe weather warnings were issued last night for large swathes of Britain as more torrential downpours are on the way.

The soaking, which has seen the soggiest April in 100 years, will ­continue with a month's rain expected to fall ­tomorrow night.

Motorists have been warned to take care as roads will be battered by gales reaching 50mph.

Cloud Lightning

Huge Dust Storm Swallows Iowa College Campus

Watch this video of a huge dust cloud that approaches and eventually covers an Iowa college campus on Friday. This video was captured on the campus of Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, and posted on YouTube.


The video's caption said the cloud was caused by an almost fully formed tornado, and caused a scare on campus.

Cloud Lightning

Flash floods kill 27 in Afghanistan- scores missing

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© AFPResidents move their belongings to higher ground after flooding in the Nahr-i Shahi district of Balkh province on February 21, 2012. Some 40 houses were damaged in overnight flooding in Nahr-i Shahi district of Balkh province.
At least 26 people were killed and more than 100 missing after flash floods hit a wedding party and three villages in northern Afghanistan, an official said Monday.

Most of the victims were women and children as the floods, caused by heavy rains, swept through areas of Deh Mardan district in Sari Pul province, said Fazlullah Sadat, head of the provincial disaster management authority.

"We have found 26 bodies mostly women and children -- and more than 100 others are still missing," he told AFP.

Wedding parties are traditionally large and joyous occasions in rural Afghanistan, but 21 people from one gathering were among the victims, he said.

"This is a human tragedy. We have a lot of human losses," said Sadat.

Bizarro Earth

More Weird Weather: Supercell brings tornado to England

Rare Storm
© Richard Glazer/Press AssociationA storm taken from the A34 heading south at Kidlington, Oxfordshire.
A "special" type of storm has swept across the country, bringing with it a tornado to some areas.

The storm, thought to be an unusual "supercell" storm, travelled through the south Midlands, bringing rain, large hailstones, and a tornado in Oxfordshire.

The thunderstorm started in the afternoon in Wiltshire, and moved across Oxfordshire - where a tornado was reported in several places including Bicester, Eynsham, and Kidlington - then moved to Buckinghamshire.

Richard Glazer drove through the tornado with his wife and son on the A34 near Kidlington, Oxfordshire.

"It was very wet, we were just driving on the A34 and looked up and realised one part of the sky was moving in one direction and another in the opposite direction," he said. "I thought, 'that looks like a tornado!' We pretty much drove through it, we were right underneath it. As we drove into it the trees were blowing left to right and as we got through it they were blowing the other way."


Snowman

Farmers worry that May snow and freezing temperatures could bring crop failures to Britain

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© Mark Hamblin/2020VISION / Rex FeaturesSnow is expected over higher ground in Scotland and northern England as Britain braces itself for a chilly May Bank Holiday
Parts of Britain will be colder than the Arctic this weekend as rain and even snow threaten to put a freeze on millions of families' May Bank Holiday plans.

Beach trips and barbecues are likely to be off the agenda as forecasters predicted the mercury could plunge as low as 26F (-3C) in places on Saturday.

Holidaymakers were advised to go skiing rather than sunbathing and seaside resorts warned of multi-million pound losses and deserted beaches.

Farmers and gardeners, battered by drought and floods, have also been warned that crops and plants could be killed by widespread frosts.

Flooding continued today as the Met Office said rain hit many parts and the Environment Agency issued 19 flood warnings and 61 alerts. East Anglia, the Midlands and the South were worst hit.

Showers will hit the south coast on Saturday, a wider area of the south on Sunday, and most areas on a washout Bank Holiday Monday, with further widespread rain next week.

Cloud Lightning

Deadly tornado rips through eastern Japan

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© AFP/Kei HashimotoA tornado sweeping through Tsukuba city in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan.
A tornado ripped through eastern Japan, killing one person and injuring at least 20 people, destroying houses and cutting power to around 20,000 households.

The tornado tore through several towns north-east of Tokyo, with television footage from the city of Tsukuba showing houses torn apart, overturned cars and toppled power poles.

Aerial images showed possibly hundreds of houses and apartments with shattered glass windows, many of them with their roofs blown away.

"You could see the roaring column of wind rushing with sparks from live power lines inside it," a local man told national broadcaster NHK.

"Winds blew into my house. It took only a moment," a woman told NHK while cleaning up her home.

Officials say a 14-year-old boy was killed while up to 50 homes were destroyed. Local media reported at least 30 injuries.

Cloud Lightning

Lightning Signature Could Help Reveal the Solar System's Origins

Lightning
© NASA/Goddard Conceptual Image LabAs lightning flashes, it creates low frequency waves that circle Earth, a phenomenon known as Schumann Resonance, which tells scientists what kinds of atoms exist in a planet's atmosphere.
Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere, about 60 miles up in the atmosphere.

This electromagnetic signature, known as Schumann Resonance, had only been observed from Earth's surface until, in 2011, scientists discovered they could also detect it using NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite.

In a paper published on May 1 in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers describe how this new technique could be used to study other planets in the solar system as well, and even shed light on how the solar system formed.

"The frequency of Schumann Resonance depends not only on the size of the planet but on what kinds of atoms and molecules exist in the atmosphere because they change the electrical conductivity," says Fernando Simoes, the first author on this paper and a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "So we could use this technique remotely, say from about 600 miles above a planet's surface, to look at how much water, methane and ammonia is there."

Cloud Lightning

Wettest April in 100 years - Sodden Britain braces for more floods

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© AFPA man and his dog were killed as they tried to cross a flooded ford in Hampshire, in southeast England, on Monday, while in Northamptonshire in central England, 1,000 holidaymakers were evacuated from a caravan park.
Southern England and Wales were on high flood alert Tuesday, with thousands of homes at risk from a deluge that has killed one person after Britain's wettest April in over 100 years.

Rivers were being closely monitored as flood defences held back muddy water from over 25,000 homes, the Environment Agency said. A total of 40 warnings of expected flooding and 152 alerts for possible floods were in place Tuesday.

"There is still a risk of flooding across many parts of England and Wales with particular focus on Somerset, Dorset and Devon," the agency said Monday evening, ahead of a night of thunder and heavy showers.

Forecasters the Met Office said Tuesday that heavy rain was starting to ease but "there will still be a good deal of standing water and a continued risk of localised flooding since river levels remain high".

Boat

India Ferry Capsizes Due to Heavy Rain and Winds; 103 Dead, 100 Missing


Dhubri, India - Army divers and rescue workers pulled 103 bodies out of a river after a packed ferry boat capsized in heavy winds and rain in remote northeast India, an official said Tuesday.

At least 100 people were still missing Tuesday after the boat carrying about 350 passengers broke into two pieces late Monday, said Pritam Saikia, the district magistrate of Goalpara district.

Deep sea divers and disaster rescue soldiers worked through the night to pull bodies from the Brahmaputra River in Assam state.

Heavy winds and rain hampered rescue operations, said Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, Assam's top elected official.

"I will be ordering an inquiry into the cause of the accident, but right now our priority is to account for every person who was on the ferry," Gogoi said.

Around 150 passengers swam to safety or were rescued by villagers, said Saikia, who was supervising the rescue operations.

Camcorder

Tornado filmed coming in off the Irish Sea in Bray, Ireland

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© East Coast KayaksA screen shot from footage of the over water tornado reported off the Wicklow coast this morning.
An over water tornado has been reported off the coast of Bray,Co Wicklow, this morning.

The weather phenomena, also known as a seaspout, occurs over a body of water and is connected to a cumuliform cloud formation.

They do not suck up water and the funnel cloud is water droplets formed by condensation.

Seaspout are often associated with active weather fronts and can appear at during thunder, lightening or strong winds.

Met Éireann said while it had no record of a tornado, the right conditions existed for one.