Global Weather News - 11 October 2005

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Bangladesh floods kill 16, damage crops
Floods in northern Bangladesh have killed 16 people, damaged crops and infrastructure and marooned almost two million people over the past four days, government officials said.
The victims died crushed in collapsed houses or from drowning or snake bites as rivers burst their banks following torrential rains.
"The torrents washed away some 100,000 mud-walled houses, making at least half a million homeless in the region," a disaster management official told Reuters.
One-third of the homeless had taken refuge in government shelters or on high ground, he said.
The flooding damaged rice and vegetable crops over at least 200,000 hectares and a road network stretching nearly 1,000 kilometers, according to preliminary estimates.
One relief official said that rivers flowing into Bangladesh from India were still in spate and the situation might worsen if the rains continued.
But the Bangladesh meteorological department said on Saturday the floods were likely to recede soon.
"The rains will stop in a few days because the monsoon is on the wane," one official said.
Monsoon floods regularly sweep most parts of Bangladesh, and eastern states of India, killing hundreds of people every year.

TROPICAL STORM MUDSLIDES AND FLOODING IN CENTRAL AMERICA MAYBE KILLED WELL OVER A THOUSAND
PANABAJ, Guatemala - Rescuers pulled 71 bodies from a mudslide in a Guatemalan village, and local officials feared hundreds more may have died in the worst single tragedy from rains that devastated Central America.
The mayor of a nearby town said up to 1,000 people may lie buried under the mud, in places 40 feet thick, in the village of Panabaj but that figure could not be confirmed.
Outside emergency teams, who only began digging Friday, two days after an avalanche of mud, rocks and trees engulfed the village, put the possible death toll at 200 people.
Firemen in muddied red uniforms carried a child's corpse covered only by a banana plant leaf on a makeshift stretcher of tree branches in Panabaj, in remote highlands next to the lakeside town of Santiago Atitlan.
Another rescue worker, his face contorted with grief, carried away a dead toddler wrapped in a plastic bag.
"There are no words for this. I have only tears left," said teacher Manuel Gonzalez, whose school was destroyed.
At least 282 people were confirmed killed in Central America and southern Mexico by floods and mudslides caused by heavy rains from Hurricane Stan.
Hundreds of homes at Panabaj were swallowed when a hillside collapsed in downpours in the early hours of Wednesday.
Diego Esquina, the mayor of Santiago Atitlan, told Reuters the death toll at Panabaj might be between 500 and 1,000.
Earlier Saturday, fire brigade spokesman Mario Cruz told Reuters, "there are no survivors here. It happened more than 48 hours ago. They are dead."
"According to the figures they gave me yesterday, approximately 1,400 people have disappeared," Cruz said.
Villagers and rescuers dug with spades in search of more victims but it was difficult to find bodies in the huge quagmire. They were considering abandoning the search and declaring the area a mass grave.
Hills sodden with rain gave way throughout Central America, burying flimsy homes made of wood and tin. Floodwaters covered huge swathes of land in the region and in southern Mexico.
Guatemala, where at least 186 people died, was worst hit. At least 67 people were killed in El Salvador, 15 in Mexico, 10 in Nicaragua and four in Honduras.
A Mexican Navy helicopter took time off from rescue efforts around the flooded southern city of Tapachula to fly into Guatemala to airlift 44 people stuck in the town of Malacatan just across the border.
Central America is particularly vulnerable to rain because so many people live in precarious, improvised dwellings dangerously close to riverbeds and on mountainsides.
Hurricane Mitch killed some 10,000 people in the region, mostly in mudslides, in 1998.
The tops of lampposts and trees poked through a river of mud covering Panabaj.
"There were only houses here, for as far as you could see. ... It makes you lose hope," said Gonzalez, his voice cracking. "There are no children left, there are no people left."
The area is popular with U.S. and European tourists visiting the nearby Lake Atitlan, a collapsed volcanic cone filled with turquoise waters.
Some families were awakened in the middle of the night by rumblings from the volcano's slopes and managed to escape, but others were buried alive when a wall of mud crushed their homes a few hours later.
"If somebody had told us to leave, maybe the people would have got out. But they said nothing. Nothing," screamed Marta Tzoc, who grabbed her five children from their home and fled in time.
Across the region, mud-coated bodies piled up in morgues while survivors sobbed and said they needed food and water. Many did not know what had happened to relatives and were desperate for news.
Though Hurricane Stan fizzled out after hitting Mexico early this week, rain is forecast to continue into the weekend.
In Tapachula, Mexico -- a normally bustling town on the Guatemalan border that has been cut off since a wall of water tore through its center -- 72-year-old Luciano Aguilar stood guard with his dog by his destroyed riverside shantytown.
"This has never happened before," he said, surveying the pile of corrugated iron and smashed furniture that used to be his home. "I don't think they're going to let us keep living here."
Some 2,500 homes were destroyed in Tapachula and food was running short.
SANTIAGO ATITLAN, Guatemala Oct 9, 2005 —Dozens of Mayan Indians used hand tools to dig through hardening mud on Saturday, searching for bodies under a landslide that swallowed a Guatemalan neighborhood and pushed the regionwide death toll from a week of pounding rains to 617.
Hardest hit was the lakeside town of Santiago Atitlan, where the side of a volcano collapsed, killing at least 208 people. Officials said the victims were among 508 people killed and another 337 missing in Guatemala.
The rest of the dead were scattered throughout El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica.

SES busy after Adelaide storms
Volunteers with the State Emergency Service (SES) have answered hundreds of calls for help after strong winds and heavy rain battered much of Adelaide over the past two days.
Since Friday morning the SES has answered nearly 300 calls for help, mainly related to fallen trees and damaged roofs.
SES spokeswoman Judith Bleechmore says 120 volunteers have worked around the clock.
"We're very grateful to our crews who have worked two days in a row," she said.
"That's quite a strain on people because they're all volunteers and in fact they worked a normal working week and then came out and helped us through the nights as well."
Two crews were called to remove a large tree that crashed onto a house at Gumeracha in the Adelaide Hills yesterday.
Police and the SES were called to a Flinders Park business on Grange Road that lost half of its roof in the strong winds.
Ms Bleechmore says the weather came as a surprise.
"Although the weather forecast has not been that threatening we've just had rolling storms continuously one after the other," she said.

NSW warns against complacency over drought
The New South Wales Government is urging people to remain frugal with water use despite some promising drought figures.
The Government says the drought figures for October are the best since April 2002, with the areas declared to be in drought down to 38 per cent of the state from 77 per cent.
Above-average rain is being credited with boosting overall dams levels to 52 per cent.
But NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald says drinking water should continue to be used sparingly.
"Remain cautious. We need the follow-up rains and we need our dam levels up even higher so we should remain very judicious in our usage of water over the coming months," he said.

Global warming satellite crashes into ocean
A European satellite designed to measure how fast the polar ice caps are melting has crashed into the Arctic Ocean after its launch failed.
The European Space Agency's CryoSat was on board a rocket launched from a cosmodrome in northern Russia but it failed to establish communication at the scheduled time.
A Russian space official says the satellite is believed to have fallen into the Lincoln Sea near the North Pole, where the second rocket stage was supposed to fall.
The $224 million satellite was to have scanned the thickness of polar ice sheets and floating sea ice with unprecedented accuracy as part of an effort to understand global warming.
"The satellite did not go into orbit because of a dysfunction in the final stage ... of the second stage of the Rockot launcher," the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko as saying.
The Russian-built Rockot launcher carrying the 711-kilogram CryoSat blasted off from Russia's north-western Plesetsk cosmodrome and was to have put it in orbit about 90 minutes later.
Earlier, the ESA said it feared the satellite had been lost as it had not received a signal from the craft.
CryoSat was the first in a series of six ESA 'Earth Explorer' satellites designed to explore key environmental problems.

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FLOODING IN THE EASTERN US
KEENE, N.H. - Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate their homes after a weekend of drenching rain washed out roads and flooded homes in states from North Carolina to New Hampshire.
At least four deaths were blamed on the storm, including two people who died in New Hampshire when a car apparently drove off a washed out bridge into flood waters in Unity, said Pam Walsh, a spokeswoman for Gov. John Lynch.
Lynch returned from Europe on Sunday night to take charge of the response to the flooding and declare a state of emergency. “This is the worst damage they’ve seen from flooding in 25 years in New Hampshire,” he said.
Lynch called in 500 National Guard members to assist in flood relief. Transportation Commissioner Carol Murray said police and highway crews blocked damaged roads before dawn, a move that likely prevented injuries.
“A quick assessment is we’re probably looking at months, not weeks” to make repairs, she said.
The most severe flooding in New Hampshire was in Keene, where some major roads were under as much as 4 to 6 feet of water, fire officials said. Keene Fire Chief Gary Lamoureaux estimated 30 to 40 percent of the downtown area was under water. Keene State College canceled Monday classes and told out-of-town students to stay away.
About 500 people were evacuated, and about 150 were staying at a shelter in a recreation center Sunday. In nearby Stoddard, residents were also told to leave. Officials heard reports that houses washed into rivers, dams were breached and bridges in several communities were washed out.
“I looked out my window and all I could see — straight down — was water, right up against the building,” said Sean Weeks, 19, who was awakened by firefighters around 3:30 a.m. and told to evacuate.
Weeks said he saw a house across the street collapse into the raging water. No one was in it at the time. By late afternoon, police allowed him to return home to grab an armful of belongings: clothes, a construction tool belt, a backpack and a rifle.
In Pennsylvania, a person died after a car struck a guardrail in Bucks County and flipped into a creek, trapping the driver. A car accident in New Jersey killed a 2-year-old boy, police said.
Pennsylvania authorities rescued two boys from an Allentown creek on Saturday after their inflatable raft overturned. As the boys clung to a small tree, firefighters tossed them a pair of life jackets and then pulled them to safety with a rope. Authorities said a family was rescued from an apartment when a retaining wall collapsed, and another six were evacuated from a mobile home park.
Eight-foot-high flood waters from the Ramapo River caused officials in New Jersey’s Bergen County to evacuate about 30 residents Saturday night and early Sunday, Mayor John Szabo said. Rain also knocked out electricity to as many as 6,000 utility customers across the state.
Chris Finn, 46, said there was 3 to 4 feet of water in his Oakland, N.J. neighborhood.
“There are people that kind of joyride in canoes through the neighborhood,” Finn said, looking out his window.
In Vermont, more than 200 people, including residents of a Brattleboro senior citizen home, were evacuated Saturday night.
In North Carolina, Gov. Mike Easley warned residents to stay away from swollen rivers and creeks, already high from Hurricane Ophelia last month. The state’s Department of Transportation reported 41 roads closed because of flooding.
The National Weather Service reported that more than 5 inches of rain fell in Wilmington, N.C., on Saturday. Allentown, Pa., received 10 inches between Friday and Saturday. New Jersey’s Brunswick and Pender counties saw between 7 and 10 inches of rain in four days.
“They didn’t predict this much rain,” said Joan Kinney, mayor of Boiling Spring Lakes, N.C., which unofficially measured more than 15 inches of rain. “It took us all by surprise.”
An unusually far north surge of disturbed tropical weather and moisture interacted with a slow moving cold front which reached the eastern US oriented north-south this past weekend triggering very heavy and lengthy rainfall.

HURRICANE VINCE FORMS IN FAR EAST ATLANTIC
MIAMI - Hurricane Vince formed Sunday in the far eastern Atlantic, making it the 11th hurricane of the season, forecasters said.
The Category 1 hurricane was moving away from the United States and posed no immediate threat to land, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
“It’s very far away. It couldn’t get farther away,” said Richard Pasch, a hurricane specialist at the center. “It’s headed for Spain. It’s not going to reach there. It will likely merge with a cold front.”
At 11 p.m. EDT, Vince’s center was about 565 miles east-southeast of the Azores and about 125 miles north-northwest of the Madeira Islands. It was moving northeast at about 7 mph with top sustained winds of near 75 mph. A gradual increase in forward speed was expected during the next 24 hours, the hurricane center said.
Forecasters said Vince would begin weakening Monday and was mainly a hazard for ships in the eastern Atlantic.
Earlier Sunday, Vince formed as a tropical storm between the Azores and the Canary Islands over waters that are cooler than what is typically needed for a tropical storm, said Chris Sisko, a meteorologist at hurricane center.
Vince appeared to be the farthest east and north that a tropical storm has formed in the Atlantic, taking shape over water of 73 to 75 degrees, below the 80 degrees usually needed for a tropical storm.
“Vince is a very odd one,” Sisko said.
The 2005 hurricane season has been the second busiest on record. Only one other Atlantic season had more tropical storms and hurricanes since record keeping began in 1851. There were 21 in 1933.
The season began June 1 and ends Nov. 30.
After Vince, only one name is left for storms this season — Wilma. After that, storms are named after letters in the Greek alphabet. That has never happened before in more than 50 years of regularly naming storms.
This season has been one of the deadliest and costliest in the United States in the last century. Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,100 people on the Gulf Coast and is expected to cause more than $34 billion in insured losses.

MORE ON THE CENTRAL AMERICA FLOODING
Death toll from Central American floods climbs to 770
The official death toll from massive floods ravaging Central America and Mexico has surged to 770 as hundreds more were feared dead in Guatemala, following last week's mudslide that swallowed two small towns in the west of the country.
Hugo Hernandez, secretary of the Guatemalan National Disaster Relief Committee, said the number of dead in his country had risen from 519 to 652 as emergency workers made their way to about 100 remote communities previously cut off by the disaster.
In addition, 72 people were listed dead in El Salvador, 28 in Mexico, 11 in Nicaragua and seven in Honduras.
But the death toll was likely to double as about 1,400 people were believed to have been buried alive by a mudslide that hit the Guatemalan towns of Panajab and Tzanchaj, 180 kilometers west of the Guatemalan capital before dawn last Wednesday (local time).
GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemalan officials said they would abandon communities buried by landslides and declare them mass graveyards as reports of devastation trickled in from some of the more than 100 communities cut off from the outside world after killer mudslides.
Guatemala’s death toll from torrential rains last week associated with Hurricane Stan stood at 652; but 384 were missing.
The worst-hit communities will be abandoned and declared graveyards, officials said, after they stopped most efforts to dig out increasingly decomposed bodies.
“Panabaj will no longer exist,” said Mayor Diego Esquina, referring to the Mayan hamlet on the shores of Lake Atitlan covered by a half-mile wide mudflow as much as 15 to 20 feet thick. “We are asking that it be declared a cemetery. We are tired, we no longer know where to dig.”
Esquina said about 250 people remained missing. The bodies found were buried in mass graves.
Sniffer dogs trained to detect bodies didn’t arrive in time, and “we don’t even know where to dig anymore” in the acres of mudflows, Esquina said.
Hundreds of Mayan villagers who had swarmed over the vast mudslides with shovels, picks and axes relented Sunday and stopped digging for neighbors and family.
Vice President Eduardo Stein said steps were being taken to give towns “legal permission to declare the buried areas cemeteries” as “a sanitary measure.”
Thousands of hungry and injured survivors mobbed helicopters delivering the first food aid to communities that have been cut off from the outside.
Fleets of helicopters — including U.S. Blackhawks and Chinooks — fanned out across the nation to evacuate the wounded and bring supplies to over 100 communities still cut off by the mudslides and flooding.
“When the helicopters land, some of the people are so desperate they have begun fighting for the food,” said army Maj. Luis Ernesto Barona Gutierrez. “Some communities haven’t had food supplies in five or six days.”
When the craft arrived in communities along Guatemala’s Pacific coast, hungry villagers grabbed wildly at bags of flour, rice and sugar.
Meanwhile, scores of foreign tourists were evacuated by foot and by helicopter from isolated communities ringing Lake Atitlan, a popular destination for U.S. and European travelers.
Villagers in Panabaj, the worst-hit town, where hundreds are still missing, refused to allow in the army because of memories of a 1990 massacre there during the country’s 36-year civil war.
But U.S. military helicopters from Joint Task Force Bravo based at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras joined the rescue efforts.
“We’re still in search-and-rescue mode,” said Army Major Bob Schmidt. “We’re in the saving life and limb thought process.”
In El Salvador authorities reported 71 deaths from the rains. Others were killed in Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica.
In southern Mexico, floodwaters began to subside, but many towns remained cut off from road access after scores of bridges were carried away by record-high flood waters.

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Major drought in Amazon rainforest
MANAQUIRI, Brazil (Reuters) -- The worst drought in more than 40 years is damaging the world's biggest rainforest, plaguing the Amazon basin with wildfires, sickening river dwellers with tainted drinking water, and killing fish by the millions as streams dry up.
"What's awful for us is that all these fish have died and when the water returns there will be barely any more," Donisvaldo Mendonca da Silva, a 33-year-old fisherman, said.
Nearby, scores of piranhas shook in spasms in two inches of water -- what was left of the once flowing Parana de Manaquiri river, an Amazon tributary. Thousands of rotting fish lined the its dry banks.
The governor of Amazonas, a state the size of Alaska, has declared 16 municipalities in crisis as the two-month-long drought strands river dwellers who cannot find food or sell crops.
Some scientists blame higher ocean temperatures stemming from global warming, which have also been linked to a recent string of unusually deadly hurricanes in the United States and Central America.
Rising air in the north Atlantic, which fuels storms, may have caused air above the Amazon to descend and prevented cloud formations and rainfall, according to some scientists.
"If the warming of the north Atlantic is the smoking gun, it really shows how the world is changing," said Dan Nepstadt, an ecologist from the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Research Institute, funded by the U.S. government and private grants.
"The Amazon is a canary in a coal mine for the Earth. As we enter a warming trend we are in uncertain territory," he said.
Deforestation may also have contributed to the drought because cutting down trees cuts moisture in the air, increasing sunlight penetration onto land.
Other scientists say severe droughts were normal and occurred in cycles before global warming started.
In the main river port of Manaus, dozens of boats lay stranded in the cracked dirt of the riverbank after the water level receded. Pontoons of floating docks sit exposed on dry land. People drive cars where only months ago they swam.
An hour from where it joins the Rio Negro to form the Amazon River, the Rio Solimoes is so low that kilometers (miles) of exposed riverbank have turned into dunes as winds whip up thick sandstorms. Vultures feed on carrion.
Another major Amazon tributary, Rio Madeira, is so dry that cargo ships carrying diesel from Manaus cannot reach the capital of Rondonia state without scraping the bottom. Instead, fuel used to run power plants has to be hauled in by truck thousands of kilometers (miles) from southern Brazil.
Dry winds and low rainfall have left the rainforest more susceptible to fires that farmers routinely start to clear their pastures.
In normal dry seasons, rains arrive often enough to put out blazes that escape from farms and spread to the forest. This year, the forest is catching fire and staying aflame.
In Acre state, some 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of forest have burned since the drought started and thick black smoke has on occasion shut down airports.
"It's illegal to burn but everyone around here does it. I do it to get rid of insects and cobras and to create fresh grass for my cows," a man who would only identify himself as Calixto said while using bundles of green leaves to smother flames and control fires near a highway.
The drought has also upset daily life in communities scattered throughout the basin's labyrinth of waterways.
"We closed 40 schools and canceled the school year because there's a lack of food, transport and potable water," said Gilberto Barbosa, secretary of public administration in Manaquiri. People whose wells have dried up risk drinking river water contaminated by sewage and dead animals.
Sinking water levels have severed connections in the lattice of creeks, lakes and rivers that make up the Amazons motorboat transportation network.
Many people in Manaquiri's 25 riverine communities are now forced to walk kilometers (miles) to buy rice or medicines.
Cases of diarrhea, one of the biggest killers in the developing world, are rising in the region. Many fear stagnant water will breed malaria. In response, the state government has flown five tons of basic medicines out to distant villages.
It will be two more months before the river fills again during the rainy season. Even then, residents fear polluted water will float to the top, causing sickness and economic plight.
"I've never seen anything like this," said Manuel Tavares Silva, 39, who farms melons and corn near Manaquiri, a town 149 km (93 miles) from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state.
COLORADO SNOWSTORM OVER HOLIDAY WEEKEND
A powerful storm that dropped up to 20 inches of snow in parts of Colorado knocked out power Monday to thousands of people, closed an 80-mile stretch of a major highway and trigged rock slides in the foothills.
Authorities said a 60-year-old Denver woman died after an 8-inch- diameter tree limb snapped off and struck her. No other details were available.
Authorities closed the main east-west route across Colorado, Interstate 70, from Denver east to Limon. Seventy miles of U.S. 24 from Limon southwest to Colorado Springs were also closed. A day earlier, the Red Cross opened a shelter for stranded travelers.
The storm cut off power to 25,000 homes and businesses in Denver when power lines snapped and transformers failed, Xcel Energy spokesman Tom Henley said.
"You could hear them popping," said Tom Hartman, who was shoveling snow outside the Schlessman Family YMCA in Denver when the transformers began to crackle and die.
Power had been restored by Monday to about 2,000 homes and businesses in Breckenridge.
Dozens of schools closed or were opening late, including three in the Denver area that closed because of power failures.
Two children were hospitalized with minor injuries after a school bus slid backward down a steep embankment south of Denver, Douglas County schools spokeswoman Carol Kaness said.
In southwestern Colorado, rain associated with the storm system was believed to have triggered two rock slides in San Miguel County, including one that shut down a lane of Colorado 145 near Telluride. No injuries were reported. Steady rain also caused two rock slides in Boulder Canyon northwest of Denver, forcing the closure of one lane of Colorado 119 and damaging a car. No one was hurt.
The National Weather Service had predicted up to 4 feet of snow in the southern Colorado mountains, but some of the snow melted and the precipitation turned to rain, leaving an accumulation of about a foot.
Snowfall amounts ranged from 20 inches in Breckenridge to 12 inches in Strasburg, about 20 miles east of Denver.
"I'm not going outside this morning," said Veronica Burke, associate manager of the Village Inn restaurant in Monument, near the 7,400- foot-high summit of Monument Hill between Denver and Colorado Springs.
The wind was blowing so hard, she said, it was hard to tell how much snow had fallen.
El Paso County Search and Rescue was called to help drivers who got stuck on snowy county roads east of Colorado Springs.
"We've got people out trying out the four-wheel-drive vehicles, and they're finding out they don't work very well," spokesman Steve Sperry said.
The American Red Cross opened a shelter Sunday for stranded travelers in Silverthorne after multiple accidents closed westbound Interstate 70 between Copper Mountain and Vail Pass for 2 1/2 hours late Sunday. Earlier, several tractor-trailers jackknifed on eastbound I-70 approaching the Eisenhower Tunnel.
A fire broke out near Keystone after the heavy, wet snow helped bring down a power line, but it was quickly put out. Wind and falling tree limbs downed other lines in the mountains, causing sporadic outages, Henley said.