“The death toll from heavy flooding in southern China rose to 147, as authorities forecast more rain in coming days. In addition, the mud flows and floods have left 93 people missing and prompted the evacuation of more than 1 million people, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported, citing the Ministry of Civil Affairs.The heavy rains have affected more than 15 million people in nine of southern China’s provinces, including Fujian, Jiangxi, and Hunan provinces, the ministry told China Daily.”
Along with the surprising number of abrupt fierce floods in the middle south of late, and the massive flooding in China, there have been great floods in central and southern Europe. I’m not sure if they were similar cloudburst type events.
Excellent pictures here of recent severe floods in Poland, Germany, Hungary, Serbia, France and Spain. A correspondent from my parents’ home turf in Slovakia writes in to say “us too!“!
So you’d have to call it widespread flooding across the middle summer latitudes.
There have even been spectacular floods in the Canadian prairies, collapsing the Trans-Canada highway at a failed culvert a bit west of the Alberta/Saskatchewan border. (Video via allvoices.com)
Image of Dongxiang, China from CNN
Image of Slovakia via spravy.pravda.sk via CTK. Caption reads “Voda z Ondavy ohrozuje okolie TrebiĊĦova“.
It's not just limited to the summer hemisphere; Brazil is getting pounded as well.Word verification: revien
At this rate there soon won't be any bridges leth.But of course it has nothing to do with CO2 emissions; just ask your local coal company.
Anyway, there's one leth bridge at Lethbridge!
Hi Micheal,thanks for mentioning Slovakia! Indeed, may 2010 broke precipitation records almost everywhere in Slovakia. And two day ago we had also *flash floods* in central Slovakia from strong storms.Now these events are going to be only more frequent and frightening in the future… greetings from Slovakia, Alexander
" I'm not sure if they were similar cloudburst type events."Well, the flash flooding in southeastern France seem likely to have been, as it was extremely severe, sudden, and localized.The rain in Spain wasn't falling mainly in the plain, though Madrid did get quite a bit. Asturias had widespread flooding, and there was a lot of rain in Andalusia. Pretty much the entire penninsula, I guess. So I think this was more a case of heavy widespread sustained rain rather than a cloudburst type event.
The Slovak newspaper describes the rain as "strong", and the reports from the floods in France suggest likewise.This feels weirdly like an undergraduate physics lab gone well.