Weather Signs

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian state TV says that heavy rains led to flash floods that killed at least 19 people and injured four others in southwestern Iran. According to the TV report, the flooding hit the southwestern Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province on Tuesday night. The waters wrecked more than 50 homes and 740 acres, or 300 hectares, of farmland. The TV says at least 1,030 cattle perished. The floods also destroyed five fish-breeding facilities.

BATON ROUGE (AP) — Hurricane Gustav caused an estimated $372 million in damage to Louisiana crops, flattening fields and dumping as many as 20 inches of rain, agriculture officials said Tuesday. The storm also overflowed crawfish and catfish ponds, causing an estimated $46 million in damages to fisheries, according to initial estimates by the Louisiana State University AgCenter. Gustav wreaked even wider damage on Louisiana's farmbelt industries than powerful Katrina did in 2005, because Gustav traveled far into central and north Louisiana after making landfall with 110-mph winds a week ago. Among hardest hit crops were cotton, sweet potatoes, soybeans and sugar cane. More than 47% of Louisiana's cotton crop is estimated to be lost, a $112 million hit to what was expected to be a $237 million crop before Gustav.

GALVESTON, Texas — Some are hunkering down, some heading out and all holding their breath as Hurricane Ike churns toward a weekend landfall on Texas' Gulf Coast. The storm threatens millions of people and an array of oil refineries with wind, rain and a wall of water up to two stories high. Ike could reach Texas with winds between 111 and 155 mph. It could make landfall late Friday or early Saturday with a storm surge as high as 20 feet.

NEW YORK - The wave of storms battering the U.S. has plunged the American Red Cross deep into debt as it rushes to prepare for Hurricane Ike, prompting a searching look at how to stabilize its finances. Gail McGovern, who became the embattled charity's president in June, said even a request for federal funding is under consideration as the Red Cross seeks to become less dependent on spontaneous donations that arrive only in the wake of huge disasters. As of last week, when Ike was still a distant threat, the Red Cross said it had raised only $5 million to cover costs from Hurricane Gustav that will total at least $40 million and possibly more than $70 million. It has borrowed money to meet those bills and now is incurring more expenses as it shifts response teams to Texas and readies its shelters. McGovern said Red Cross officials were calling Gustav a "silent disaster" because it entailed sizable costs for sheltering displaced people yet did not trigger the flood of donations that often follows more deadly and destructive storms.

DUBLIN, N.H. — The Old Farmer's Almanac is going further out on a limb than usual this year, not only forecasting a cooler winter, but looking ahead decades to suggest we are in for global cooling, not warming. Based on the same time-honored, complex calculations it uses to predict weather, the Almanac hits the newsstands on Tuesday saying a study of solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate point to a cooler, not warmer, climate, for perhaps the next half century.