Weather Signs

HOUSTON — More than half a million children in the nation's fourth-largest city and on the Texas Gulf CoastHouston — the biggest school district in Texas — and all of the Galveston schools remained closed Friday, September 26^th. Most Houston schools will reopen on Monday. Officials have been drying soggy carpets and wall maps and airing out moldy library books. Fallen trees are being removed and the fences around schoolyards repaired. While a few Galveston schools will open next week, many are serving as shelters for people made homeless by the storm, while others are too damaged to use any time soon. have been out of school since the Sept. 13 storm (Ike) brought life to a standstill. About 20% of schools in

WINNIE, Texas (AP) — Bolivar residents crowded onto the only roadway into the peninsula on Friday. They were allowed to check out the massive wreckage left behind after Hurricane Ike roared through this thin strip of land along the Gulf of Mexico. The peninsula's 4,000 or so residents were allowed back on a "look and leave" policy. Officials said the area is not safe to live in because of a lack of water and utilities as well as dangers from snakes and alligators. Terrie Robbins expected to find storm damage when she and other residents were allowed to return home on Bolivar Peninsula for the first time Friday since fleeing Hurricane Ike. But she didn't expect to find her home more than 500 feet from its concrete foundation, dumped next to a bar across the main highway that runs through the peninsula. She said she was lucky. Her parents, who live two streets away, weren't even able to locate their home. "We survived (Hurricanes) Carla and Alicia. Just not Ike. Ike was more powerful," said Robbins' sister, Kellie Collins.

ATLANTA — A storm-related gas shortage in the Southeast that has left some places bone-dry and others with two-hour gas lines is expected to continue for at least another two weeks, energy experts and industry officials say. The shortage began two weeks after Hurricane Gustav hit the oil-refining regions of the Gulf Coast on Sept. 1. Operations that shut down before that storm were just coming back online when Hurricane Ike hit, forcing another shutdown. The gas shortage, now in its third week, is particularly acute here in sprawling Atlanta, in Nashville in parts of the Carolinas and in Anniston, Ala.

BEIJING (AP) — Flash floods and landslides unleashed by heavy rains have killed 16 people in one of the areas hit hardest by the massive May earthquake in China's Sichuan province, the local government said Friday. About 20,000 people affected by the floods were evacuated and have been moved to safer places and given food and water, the city's Communist Party propaganda department said in a statement. The flooding and landslides since Wednesday also have left 48 people missing and 360 people injured in Sichuan's Mianyang city, the agency said. More than 42,000 houses have been destroyed.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Haiti's president implored leaders at the U.N. General Assembly on Friday to commit to long-term solutions to help his nation after a series of hurricanes and tropical storms killed hundreds. President Rene Preval said it will take years to recover from the four killer storms that wiped out at least 60% of Haitian agriculture and destroyed roads, bridges and homes across the country in late August and early September. At least 425 people were killed in the storms. Officials said more than 800,000 people in the country of 9 million were left needing food, water or shelter, including more than 300,000 children.

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GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — One week after Hurricane Ike wiped out whole neighborhoods and nearly every basic service in Galveston, there is a plan to start letting some 45,000 evacuees back to their hobbled hometown. Those who left heeded dire warnings to flee. Now they've been given a new warning: Going home won't be easy. No power, limited sewer services and spotty water utilities are among the trials that city officials say could await residents when a gradual reopening of Galveston begins next week. "You will need to decide if you want to come back in those conditions," city manager Steve LeBlanc said Friday. Residents will be allowed to return in phases, starting from the least damaged areas.

Shrimpers and oystermen lost their boats to the muck. Tourist areas on the coast that should be bustling at the start of convention season are flattened. Lingering power outages are keeping offices empty and restaurants closed from Texas through the Midwest. It will take months or more to tally Hurricane Ike's financial toll, but one thing is clear: Almost nobody in its path escaped unscathed. The storm carried hurricane-force winds as far north as Kentucky — which suffered its widest power outage in history — and driving rain clear into New England. More than 500,000 people remained without power Friday in Kentucky and Ohio; schools in Louisville, were to open Monday after Ike closed them for a week.

In Texas, power has been restored to more than half the customers who lost electricity during the storm. The fuel industry reports that more than 75% of retail stations have resumed operations and nearly 100% of terminals were operating. Ike crashed ashore last weekend near the mouth of Galveston Bay, which produces about 15 million pounds of seafood each year. Shrimpers and oystermen there will practically have to start over. Even those who can salvage their trawlers will have to cope with the carpet of debris Ike dumped on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. However, in Houston, where the booming energy industry has kept the nation's fourth-largest city economically stable in a nationwide slump, the outlook was downright positive. The city's port survived with minimal damage, and the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas production barely took a dent.

BHUBNESHWAR, India (AP) — Monsoon flooding has killed at least 16 people and left more than 220,000 marooned in villages in eastern India as incessant rains caused a river to breach its banks in several places, an official said. So far, 180,000 people have been evacuated to relief camps. The new flooding comes just a month after the monsoon-swollen Kosi river, a Ganges tributary that flows from Nepal to India, burst its banks and submerged nearly 1,000 villages in the impoverished northern Indian state of Bihar, killing at least 48 people and driving more than a million others from their homes.

Weather Signs

HOUSTON — Rescue crews pulled out of Galveston and the death toll climbed to 51 Wednesday as a broad swath of the country from the Gulf Coast to the upper Midwest reeled from the aftereffects of Hurricane Ike. Thousands remained on the island of Galveston despite authorities' urging them to leave, and thousands more choked an interstate leading in. The backlog of traffic frustrated transportation officials, who pointed out that among those idling in the choked interstate were emergency crews and trucks hauling resources badly needed on the island. In Houston, residents again waited in line for hours Wednesday at two dozen supply distribution centers for food, water and ice. Mayor Bill White complained FEMA wasn't bringing in the supplies fast enough. FEMA officials in Houston said they were refining glitches in the relief effort and delivering millions of meals and water every 24 hours.

HOUSTON — The Texas public health commission has warned of a public health crisis if post-hurricane conditions persist. The University of Texas Medical Branch, a major hospital with a trauma center in Galveston, is closed because of water and wind damage. Health officials already are seeing a flood of hurricane-related injuries and illnesses. Starting Wednesday, paramedics were told to bring the least critical patients a few blocks away to an engineering building at Rice University, where the federal government's Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) set up a mobile medical unit. Another disaster medical team that has worked in the Galveston hospital's emergency room since Sunday treated 650 patients by Thursday night. About 60% were flown out by helicopter. "People who stayed during the storm are coming on foot, by bicycle," says Michael Purcaro of the Connecticut-based medical team that, along with an Iowa team, is staffing the Galveston DMAT. The bacteria in the flood zone has had time to incubate, says UTMB president David Callender. "There is no running water, no sewage process, no natural gas to cook food, food is spoiled, there's all this debris," he says. "We're moving into a high-risk phase."

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — Hundreds of people whose beachfront homes were wrecked by Hurricane Ike may be barred from rebuilding under a little-noticed Texas law. And even those whose houses were spared could end up seeing them condemned by the state. Now here's the saltwater in the wound: It could be a year before the state tells these homeowners what they may or may not do. Worse, if these homeowners do lose their beachfront property, they may get nothing in compensation from the state. The reason: A 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and it is illegal to build anything there.

BREEDSVILLE, Mich. (AP) — Part of a dam in Van Buren County has given way to rising waters as rivers remain above flood stage across much of southern Michigan. Heavy rains that included remnants of Hurricane Ike have caused flooding in wide areas of the state.

OneNewsNow reports that many Haitians have been fending for themselves since Ike struck more than a week ago, struggling without airborne assistantce. Many low-lying areas were already flooded from previous tropical storms, and Ike exacerbated conditions to life-threatening levels. Mission Aviation Fellowship reports that some landing trips are under water. Will White, a pilot with MAF, said, "What little infrastructure in the roads that were here [such as] bridges are now washed out....they were bad roads to start with and now they're just destroyed," he shares. "The government is very limited in what they can do. Right now the relief effort is from the international community."

Ike’s Havoc Expands

GALVESTON, Texas — Emergency crews on Monday reached some of the beach towns most devastated by Hurricane Ike, which left a giant disaster zone spread from the Gulf Coast to the upper Midwest. Three days after Ike crashed ashore, 47people were reported dead, the majority outside Texas. Ike's remnants caused flooding as far north as Chicago. Across the Midwest, the violent weather closed hundreds of schools and blocked roads. In Texas, the largest search-and-rescue operation in state history was likely to continue for several days. Rescuers found 60 survivors on the Bolivar Peninsula, which stretches across the Texas Gulf Coast. Some communities were nearly washed away, including Smith Point and Oak Island just north of the peninsula. Oak Island, which has about 500 residents, lost about 95% of its homes.

Among the biggest problems in Ike's aftermath: an estimated 3.9 million people were still without power Tuesday in Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana and Arkansas, the Energy Department reported; nearly 40,000 people were in shelters; about 99% of crude oil production operations in the Gulf region were offline. Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said the situation is nearing a health crisis. The city can produce only a tiny amount of clean drinking water, there is minimal electricity and the University of Texas Medical Branch is unable to care for seriously injured people. To the roughly 20,000 people who remained, Thomas said simply, "Please leave. The city is in ruins." Along the 30-mile Bolivar Peninsula that stretches across the southern part of Galveston Bay, towns were accessible only by boat. About two-thirds of Houston's 2.2 million residents lacked power Tuesday.

ST. LOUIS — Just a few months after near-record flooding across the Midwest, roads in the region were under water again Tuesday and more than 1 million people were without power thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ike. Several rivers in Missouri were rising toward crests expected later this week, some more than 15 feet above flood stage. Flooding already was occurring at several towns along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, including St. Louis. Ike dumped as much as 8 inches of rain on parts of Indiana, Illinois and Missouri after coming ashore in Texas during the weekend. It spawned hurricane-force wind in Ohio and a tornado in Arkansas that damaged several buildings.

Weather Signs

HOUSTON — It took only hours for Hurricane Ike to swamp vast sections of the Texas Gulf Coast and shatter parts of a once-gleaming skyline in the nation's fourth-largest city. Yet Ike's bitter legacy is likely to linger for months. Much of the region is covered in debris, 2.5 million people in three states lack power, the water supply has been threatened and a key center of the nation's oil and gas industry has been knocked off line. Fifteen GulfCoast refineries were shut down Sunday, including ExxonMobil's Baytown, Texas, facility, the nation's largest refinery. A trail of thunderstorms sat over parts of southeastern Texas during the early morning, dropping more rain on already flooded areas. Although Texas Gov. Rick Perry says the Gulf region escaped a "worst-case" scenario, jarring images of destruction confronted rescue crews as they moved through a giant disaster zone, trying to account for thousands of residents who had ignored officials' pleas to evacuate before the storm. At least 10 waterfront structures in Galveston, where Ike roared ashore early Saturday, were swept into the Gulf.

The death toll from Ike rose to 30 in eight states, far fewer than the 1,600 killed when Katrina hit the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts in 2005. But the destruction from Ike is scattered across hundreds of miles in Texas and Louisiana and likely will cost billions of dollars It is unclear when the estimated 2 million people who fled the area — and spread throughout Texas and elsewhere — will be able to return. A massive search-and-rescue effort continued into Sunday evening and was credited with saving nearly 2,000 people stranded by Ike's fury. It could take two days before authorities complete a house-to-house search for casualties in Galveston. McCraw said another 2,000 people, many of whom had refused to evacuate before the storm, were being moved to shelters in San Antonio. Most of Houston lacked power Sunday, and Perry urged residents to stay away from damaged areas until local officials announced it was safe to come back. Schools in Houston and in several other districts were closed indefinitely. Health officials urged residents to use bottled water or boil tap water.

CHICAGO (AP) — Just two weeks ago it was drought that was causing many Illinois farmers some sleepless nights. And now it's the weekend's record rainfall and ensuing flooding that are giving grief to corn and soybean producers in northern and central Illinois. University of Illinois agricultural economist Stu Ellis said the heavy rains could provide the right environment for fungus to sprout and spread in soybean fields. Ellis said the area around his home in Decatur got more than six inches of rain during the weekend, with some soybean fields turning yellow — already saturated from rain last week. "We've never had flooding like this," said Tom DeGiulio, town manager in Munster, Ind. About 1 million households and businesses had no electricity Monday morning in Ohio alone, and authorities said it could take a week for power to be restored in some areas. Roughly 575,000 Duke Energy customers in southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky plus 539,000 American Electric customers in Ohio were still without power Monday. In New York, more than 60,000 people from Buffalo to Albany were without power Monday after high wind during the night.

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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.

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PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos (AP) — Hurricane Ike damaged most of the homes on Grand Turk island as it roared onto the Bahamas, raked Haiti's flooded cities with rain and threatened the Florida Keys on its way to Cuba as a ferocious Category 4 storm Sunday. Turks and Caicos premier Michael Misick said Ike damaged more than 80% of the homes on Grand Turk and South Caicos islands. Hundreds lost their roofs and all the fishermen lost boats as the hurricane made a near-direct hit. Hurricane Ike tore across Cuba with 100-mph winds Monday, sending 50-foot waves that crashed over buildings and forcing the evacuation of 900,000 people.

HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Ike roared toward Cuba's densely populated capital of fragile historic buildings after forcing 1.2 million people to evacuate, killing at least four and ravaging homes elsewhere on the island nation. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center warned that, after passing into the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday night, Ike could strike Louisiana or Texas sometime this weekend.

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) — Hurricane Ike's torrential rains swelled rivers across Haiti and sent floodwaters gushing into homes in the dead of night in one eastern town, killing at least 58 people. Most roads remain impassible, with bridges torn away by overflowing rivers and gaping holes preventing aid from moving by land. Three bodies were found in Gonaives on Sunday, all victims of previous storms. In all, four storms in less than a month have killed at least 319 people in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

• JJ Commentary: Please note that Haiti is also one of the heaviest centers for witchcraft and voodoo.

Weather Signs

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) — Entering a flooded city on inflatable boats, U.N. peacekeepers found hundreds of hungry people stranded for two days on rooftops and upper floors Wednesday as the fetid carcasses of drowned farm animals bobbed in soupy floodwaters. Haiti seems cursed this hurricane season, with its crops ruined and at least 137 people killed by three storms in less than three weeks. Even as Tropical Storm Hanna edged away to the north, forecasters warned that a fourth storm — Hurricane Ike — could hit the Western hemisphere's poorest country as a major storm next week. Rescue convoys had been trying to drive into Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, but kept turning back because lakes formed over every road into town.

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands who fled Hurricane Gustav's destructive path returned to darkened homes and debris-clogged streets Wednesday as workers scrambled to restore power to more than 1 million Louisiana residents. As of Wednesday afternoon, 1.3 million customers remained without power throughout the state, including 175,000 in Baton Rouge and 77,000 in New Orleans, according to state figures. Gustav's death toll jumped to 18 in the USA. Most died in traffic accidents, two in a post-storm tornado, and at least one was attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning related to generator use. The storm killed 94 during its march through the Caribbean. During Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana's capital city was a haven for Gulf Coast evacuees — the staging area that shipped food, fuel and manpower to flood-ravaged communities. Three years later, Baton Rouge itself needs help after Hurricane Gustav became the worst storm to hit there since Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Gustav ravaged the city's oldest neighborhoods. On Wednesday, 85% of the 300,000 electric customers in the combined city and parish remained without power.

USA TODAY — The strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean have become more intense due to global warming over the past 25 years, according to a new study in Wednesday's edition of the British journal Nature. The findings add fuel to the simmering argument in the meteorological community about the Earth's changing climate, and its relationship to the power of tropical systems worldwide. Scientists from Florida StateUniversity and the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed satellite data from nearly 2,000 tropical cyclones around the world from 1981 to 2006, and found that the strongest storms are getting stronger, especially over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Tropical cyclones are the umbrella term for hurricanes (in the Atlantic and east Pacific), typhoons (in the West Pacific) and cyclones (in the Indian). Elsner's team found that wind speeds for the strongest hurricanes increased from an average of 140 mph in 1981 to 156 mph in 2006, while the average global sea-surface temperature — as measured in all regions where tropical cyclones form — increased from 82.8 degrees to 83.3 degrees during those 25 years. The authors calculated that this increase in ocean temperature results in a 31% increase in the global frequency of strong cyclones from 13 to 17 per year.

TORONTO (AP) — A massive 19-square-mile ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic has broken away from Ellesmere Island, surprising scientists who say the floating ice shelf is another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier. Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, said Wednesday that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and is now drifting into the Arctic Ocean. Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa, says reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf loss this summer.

• JJ Commentary: Once again, please note that while global warming is real, human causes are but a fraction of what is, and always has been, a cycle of nature (and now, a sign of the end-times)

Weather Signs

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — At least 20,000 people in northern Bangladesh have been cut off from the rest of the country after several rivers burst their banks, news reports said Sunday. Emergency officials said the situation is likely to deteriorate. Crops on some 25,000 acres of land were under water in the northern districts of Lalmonirhat, Rangpur, Kurigram, Nilphamari and Gaibandha, the United News of Bangladesh agency reported. The Daily Star newspaper reported at least 60,000 day laborers lost their jobs because of the flooding. The official Flood Forecasting and Warning Center called the flood situation in the country "alarming" because water levels in all three major rivers — Jamuna, Padma and Meghna — were rising simultaneously. The center said more low-lying areas in both northern and central Bangladesh are likely to be submerged within two to three days and that northeastern districts bordering India are under threat.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Southern Chile's heaviest rains in four decades have damaged hundreds of houses and left thousands of people isolated. Rain ceased early Tuesday after more than 40 hours. Emergency Bureau director Carmen Fernandez says one woman is dead due to a collapsed wall, 2,000 have evacuated their homes and more than 12,000 are isolated by flooding in rural areas.

SAINT-MARC, Haiti — Haitian families scrambled onto rooftops and screamed for help Tuesday in a city flooded by Tropical Storm Hanna, as U.N. peacekeepers and rescue convoys tried in vain to reach them. By Tuesday night, Hanna claimed 21 lives in Haiti, including 12 dead in the state containing the cutoff city of Gonaives, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste of the country's civil protection office in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Heavy rain from the storm's outer bands fell relentlessly in Haiti, a country still recovering from drenchings by Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Fay in the past two weeks. In all, floods and mudslides from the three storms have killed more than 100 people as Haiti's deforested hills melted away in the torrential rains.

Weather

PHOENIX — Even by the Valley's temperamental monsoon weather standards, Thursday's storm was one for the ages. With wind gusts of up to 100 mph, more than 1,500 lightning strikes recorded in a single hour and a multimillion-dollar path of destruction stretching from the southeast Valley through central Phoenix, the monsoon storm left hundreds of thousands of area residents going to sleep without power and many more awestruck at the devastation when they awoke Friday morning. Nearly 80,000 Valley homes that lost electricity Thursday night. Hundred-year-old trees were uprooted in Phoenix, roofs were stripped throughout the Valley as block walls toppled and dumpsters were tossed around like tin cans; normally dry roads in Tempe became small lakes and large swaths of the Valley went dark as power poles snapped like toothpicks. The most visible damage came at Arizona State University in Tempe, where an $8.4 million indoor-athletic facility was demolished.

SUPAI - An American Indian village and Grand Canyon tourist spot hit by flooding won't reopen to visitors for at least six months. The Havasupai tribe had hoped to reopen its village, campsites and hiking trails within weeks of the Aug. 16 flood, but damage was more extensive than first thought.

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STEINHATCHEE, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Fay's path Saturday crossing the Florida Panhandle vaulted the stubborn weather system into the record books. The tropical storm crossed over the central Florida Panhandle at 5 a.m., the first in recorded history to hit the state with such intensity four different times. Though Fay never materialized into a hurricane, its zigzagging downpours have been plenty punishing. "The damage from Fay is a reminder that a tropical storm does not have to reach a hurricane level to be dangerous and cause significant damage," said Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who toured flooded communities this week. Crist said the storm damaged 1,572 homes in Brevard County alone, dropping 25 inches of rain in Melbourne. The remnants of Tropical Storm Fay lumbered inland Sunday, dumping heavy rains across the South and putting Gulf Coast cities including New Orleans on flood watch as the region prepares to mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina this week. The storm still has a few days left before it peters out, said Mike Eckert, a meteorologist at the center in Camp Springs, Md. "Fay is not finished yet," he said. "Sometimes, the weaker storms that move very, very slowly can be your biggest rainfall makers."

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — At least four tornadoes touched down southeast of Denver on Sunday, the eve of the Democratic National Convention. The twisters caused no substantial damage but brought out amateur storm-chasers and cast a spooky pall over the city. Authorities said one twister touched down about 20 miles southeast of downtown Denver, between the towns of Castle Rock and Parker. Television footage showed a dusty twister spinning through relatively open country, with scattered houses nearby.

LEWISTON, Maine — People worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers' Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S. "Numb's the word," says the 192-year-old publication, which claims an accuracy rate of 80 to 85% for its forecasts that are prepared two years in advance. The almanac's 2009 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder-than-average temperatures this winter, with only the Far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings.

PATNA, India (AP) — Authorities struggled Monday to get aid to more than 1 million people stranded by floods in a north Indian state, with one local government leader describing the situation as a catastrophe. Air force helicopters and troops were trying to get food to people in the stricken areas of Bihar state that were inundated by flood waters last week after torrential rains caused the Kosi river in neighboring Nepal to burst its banks. "It is not a normal flood, but a catastrophe," said Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after making an aerial survey of the ravaged districts.

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GAUHATI, India (AP) — Monsoon floods have left nearly 80,000 people stranded and dependent on emergency aid for food and water in India's remote northeast, an official said Wednesday. Authorities used motorboats to rush aid to flood victims in more than 70 inundated villages on Majuli, one of Asia's largest freshwater islands located in the Brahmaputra River. Heavy monsoon rains have been lashing the region since Monday, and officials warn that more rain will fall in the flood-prone region in the coming days. Last year, floodwaters submerged nearly half of Majuli island and forced up to 30,000 people to flee to higher ground. Floods, mudslides, house collapses and lightning strikes have killed at least 225 people across the country so far this year.

MELBOURNE, Fla. — Tropical Storm Fay continued its slow, wet trudge across Florida for a fifth day Friday, prompting communities farther inland and on the state's Gulf coast to brace for what could be drenching rains. The erratic storm has dumped more than two feet of rain along parts of Florida's low-lying central Atlantic coast. It is just the fourth storm to make landfall in Florida three separate times, and the first in nearly 50 years. Before it crosses the Panhandle by the weekend, it could bring buckets of rain and power outages. Isolated tornadoes were possible in parts of northeastern Florida, southeastern Georgia and southern South Carolina, the National Hurricane Center said. As if a fifth straight day of rain from Tropical Storm Fay wasn't enough, weary residents are now dealing with quintessentially Floridian fallout: -- alligators, snakes and other critters that have been driven from their swampy lairs into flooded streets, backyards and doorsteps.

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ESCOBARES, Texas — The Rio Grande Valley's main highway was reopened and flood waters receded Tuesday after up to 13 inches of rain swamped southern Texas. Emergency officials on Monday had to use boats to pluck people from their flooded houses. An estimated 750 homes in Starr County were flooded. Earlier Monday, the water was as much as 3 or 4 feet deep in neighborhoods east of Roma and north of U.S. Highway 83, the Rio Grande Valley's main artery, at dusk. About 60 people were plucked from flooded homes and taken to a local community center.

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PHOENIX (AP) — When Cedar Hemmings and his small party returned from a Grand Canyon hike to the spot where they had tied their rafts, they found that a flash flood had left them stranded. "We were basically stuck up the canyon without our rafts," he said. "We had no supplies, no food and very little water, we lost everything." Hemmings and his group were airlifted out of the scenic gorge by helicopter Sunday, as were about 170 other people who were endangered by floodwaters created by days of heavy rains which at one point breached an earthen dam. No injuries were reported, but dozens of people were spending the night at an American Red Cross evacuation center set up in the Hualapai Tribal Gymnasium in Peach Springs, Ariz.. Rescuers worked throughout Sunday to locate campers and Supai Village residents and safely transport them to the top of the canyon. About 400 Havasupai tribe members live in the village.

Weather Signs

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The death toll from floods and landslides in northern Vietnam rose to 151 after 31 more bodies were recovered, officials said Sunday. At least 50 others were reported missing. "We expect the death toll to rise because rescue workers have just begun to reach affected areas, where communication was very limited," Luong Tuan Anh of Yen Bai said. Rampaging waters have also knocked down trees, electricity pylons and washed away houses. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate to higher ground.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — With the rain showing no signs of letting up, much of New Hampshire was on a flood watch for the ninth day in a row. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning Monday for central Grafton County in northern New Hampshire, saying excessive runoff from heavy rainfall would cause flooding of small creeks, streams, country roads and farmland. It also issued a flash flood watch covering most of the state, saying torrential downpours were expected throughout the afternoon and evening. Over the last few weeks, heavy rain and flooding has been wreaking havoc throughout the region. And even more rain is expected throughout the next several days, according to Weather Service meteorologist Tom Hawley.

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HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Landslides and floods killed at least 62 people in northern Vietnam, covering the homes of some victims as they slept in their beds, disaster officials said Saturday. Dozens more were reported missing and officials feared the death toll would rise as they struggled to reach isolated communities. With heavy rain continuing Saturday, rescue workers were trying to move people to higher ground.

ASHLAND, N.H. — A 7-year-old girl was killed after two small brooks merged into a raging torrent and swept her family's SUV 100 yards downstream at a campground. The girl's father escaped from the car and screamed for help, and her mother and brother were rescued after clinging to a tree in the raging water Thursday evening. About 29 people were evacuated from the campground and put up in hotels. Farther south, heavy rain and flooding caused a sink hole about 50 wide and 12 feet deep in the Weirs Beach section of Laconia. It washed out part of the boardwalk at the tourist attraction and nearly 200 feet of railroad track was undermined and left suspended, said state Emergency Management spokesman Jim Van Dongen.

High winds from Thursday's violent monsoon thunderstorm felled 69 power poles and left about 3,700 customers without electricity in the Buckeye area, according to Arizona Public Service Co. At the height of Thursday's storm, nearly 21,000 APS and 20,000 Salt River Project customers Valley-wide lost power, though most had their power restored by Friday. The storm delayed flights at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport for the second night in a row.

Add heavy rainfall to the litany of expected bad news due to climate change. Along with the likelihood of more intense heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes, a new study released today reports that extreme precipitation events are already increasing as the globe warms. This is the first actual, observed evidence that scientists say confirms the link between global warming and more powerful rainstorms. "A warmer atmosphere contains larger amounts of moisture, which boosts the intensity of heavy downpours," reports study co-author Brian Soden of the University of Miami. What's worse, the measured increase in extreme rainfall is much larger than the increase that current climate models predict, which likely means the amount of additional rainfall due to climate change is seriously underestimated. Based on 20 years of satellite observations, the scientists found a direct link between tropical rainfall extremes and temperature, with heavy rain events increasing during warm periods and decreasing during cold periods.

· JJ Commentary: Whether human-caused or not, these changes in global weather are all part of the emerging end-time scenario.

Weather Signs

SEOUL (AP) — Heavy rains that battered North Korea in recent weeks have heavily damaged crops, state media said Monday, dealing a further blow to the impoverished country as it struggles to avert a food crisis. Strong downpours pounded many parts of North Korea between Friday and Sunday, including Kangwon province, which received 12.7 inches of rain, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. The harsh weather came a week after similar rains lashed the country, it said. The heavy rains came as North Korea faces its worst food crisis since the late 1990s, when an estimated 2 million people died of hunger. The North has since relied on foreign aid to feed its 23 million people.

Weather Signs

RALEIGH, N.C. — On the same day that a new report showed more North Carolina counties are battling drought than were last year, Gov. Mike Easley signed a law giving state officials broader powers to respond to drought. A U.S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday showed that 24 North Carolina counties are in "exceptional" drought — the most dire classification — while 14 are in "extreme" and eight are "severe." Under the new measure, Easley and future governors can direct water systems to share their water with other regions without having to invoke the governor's constitutional powers and declare a state of emergency when the public's health is in jeopardy.

Weather Woes Continue

TOKYO (AP) — Four people died Monday in central Japan after being swept away in torrential rains that caused floods and mudslides and prompted an evacuation order for 50,000 people, officials said. In the city of Kanazawa, about 180 miles northwest of Tokyo, heavy rain flooded houses and led authorities to issue a mass evacuation order, said Hiroyuki Tatsuda, a city spokesman. "We were inundated in just a couple hours this morning," Tatsuda said. "We haven't had such heavy rain for years."

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. — The flooding that swamped large areas of the Midwest took with it some of the region's most valuable resource: soil. Now farmers and environmentalists are at odds over what to do with erosion-prone land — take their chances planting crops on marginal land in hopes of good yields and high grain prices, or plant trees, native grasses or ground cover that act as a natural flood buffer. The floods may have caused up to $3 billion in crop losses in Iowa and $800 million in crop damage in Indiana, according to estimates from agriculture secretaries in those states.

Weather

The flood damage to Iowa crops could reach $3 billion, according to the state's agriculture secretary. "Right now, we have about 10 percent of our corn that has either been flooded out or not planted and about 20 percent of our (soy)beans," Bill Northey told a public television show. Amid the battle to hold back the swollen Mississippi River, some towns in northeastern Missouri and Illinois got an unwelcome surprise Saturday as river levels rose higher than projected. Forecasters said Saturday afternoon that the river would crest several inches higher than expected in Hannibal and at Quincy, Ill., where it was set to crest late in the day more than 2 feet below the '93 flood peak,

• .JJ Commentary: The Midwest has had two “hundred-year floods” in just 15 years.

A typhoon, which has submerged entire communities and set off landslides, has left at least 155 dead in the Philippines, said Sen. Richard Gordon, head of the national Red Cross, based on field reports from his staff. But there were concerns the death toll would jump dramatically. The 72 people listed as missing does not include the more than 740 passengers and crew aboard the MV Princess of Stars, a passenger ferry that capsized during Typhoon Fengshen.