From floods to snowstorms, blame La Nina

A parked car is buried in snow following a winter storm in Toronto last week. (Darren Calabrese/THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO)

If you think this year’s winter is a bit harsher than those in your recent memory, blame La Nina.

Environment Canada says the weather phenomenon has been wreaking havoc around the globe — and having an effect here at home.

“We’ve already had more snow this winter as we had all winter last year,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist.

La Nina, which Phillips describes as “the nasty sister of El Nino,” is the result of the cooling of the Pacific Ocean along the equator and the subsequent changing of wind patterns.

For Canada, this generally leads to colder and longer winters as systems come in from the northern air masses, although Ontario is not usually affected as much as the western provinces.

“What we see is more cold spells and a bit more snow, but it varies,” said Phillips. According to Phillips, the winter may even be a little longer than the last, with the possibility of snow into April.

“It is good for skiers, not good for people who want to save money on their home heating bills,” said Phillips.

La Nina tends to come every three to seven years; scientists are never able to predict its arrival, only what may happen once it’s here.

“It affects the weather around the globe,” said Phillips. “Some of the floods in Brazil, Sri Lanka and Australia are directly related to La Nina.”

Raging floodwaters have swamped thousands of homes and businesses in Queensland, leaving at least 25 people dead and dozens more missing since late November. Rail lines and highways have been washed away in what is shaping up to become Australia's costliest natural disaster.

The flooding follows a spate of severe natural disasters in the past year. While the most deadly was Haiti's earthquake, extreme weather also killed thousands of people across the globe, including a scorching heat wave that choked Russia in the summer and devastating floods that engulfed more than 150,000 square kilometres in Pakistan.

The effects of La Nina can last anywhere from six months to 18 months. El Nino, on the other hand, is the result of temperatures rising in Pacific Ocean along South America, and brings Canada much shorter and warmer winters like that of last year.

“What’s been unusual this year is that it went from El Nino to La Nina almost overnight,” said Phillips, explaining that there is usually a transition period of neutral ocean temperatures between the two.

With files from The Associated Press

This aerial photograph shows residential suburbs inundated as flood waters devastate much of Brisbane on Jan. 13, 2011.(TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/Getty Images)

'Biblical' flooding hits eastern Australia

Flood waters swamp the shopping centre in the city of Toowoomba. Australia. (Nicole Alayne HAMMERMEISTER/AFP/Getty Images)

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA—Greg Kowald was driving through the centre of Toowoomba when a terrifying, tsunami-like wall of water roared through the streets of the northeast Australian city.

Office windows exploded, cars careened into trees and bobbed in the churning brown water like corks. The deluge washed away bridges and sidewalks; people desperately clung to power poles to survive. Before it was over, the flash flood left at least 10 dead and 78 missing.

“The water was literally leaping, six or 10 feet into the air, through creeks and over bridges and into parks,” Kowald, a 53-year-old musician, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “There was nowhere to escape, even if there had been warnings. There was just a sea of water about a kilometre wide.”

The violent surge in Toowoomba brought the overall death toll from weeks of flooding in Queensland state to 20, a sudden acceleration in a crisis that had been unfolding gradually with swollen rivers overflowing their banks and inundating towns while moving toward the ocean. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said there were “grave fears” for at least 18 of those missing.

The high waters headed next to Australia’s third-largest city, Brisbane, where up to 9,000 homes were expected to be swamped. The Brisbane River overflowed its banks Tuesday and officials warned that dozens of low-lying neighbourhoods and parts of downtown could be inundated in coming days.

But nothing downstream was expected to be as fierce as the flash flood that struck Toowoomba on Monday. It was sparked by a freak storm — up to 150 millimetres fell in half an hour.

“There was water coming down everywhere in biblical proportions,” Toowoomba council member Joe Ramia told the AP.

Ramia, 63, was driving downtown when the flash flood struck. He parked his car and dashed on foot for higher ground, keeping an eye on the carnage unfolding below: Cars transformed into scrap metal as they were flung into an elevated railway line, giant metal industrial bins tossed about as if made of paper, a man clinging desperately to a power pole as the relentless tide surged around him.

Ramia watched as a rescue official pushed through the churning water and yanked the man to safety. Others, including five children, were not as lucky, and were swept to their deaths.

“You were powerless to do a thing,” said Ramia, a lifelong resident of Toowoomba. “While we can rebuild, you can’t replace people. . . . I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The raging water was strong enough to rip houses off their foundations. Leroy Shephard, who lives in the town of Grantham, east of Toowoomba, was inside his home when the flood struck.

“You could feel the whole house just pop up off its stumps, turn around, and go — for a 100 metres or something down my backyard,” Shephard told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

FLOORBOARDS ‘RIPPLE,’ ROOMS ‘JUST DISAPPEAR’

He and his family spent five hours on the house’s roof waiting for the waters to drop.

“It’s not a good feeling having the floorboards under your feet just ripple, the whole house just ripple and crack, and watching rooms just disappear,” he said.

Emergency services officers plucked more than 40 people from houses isolated overnight by the torrent that hit the Lockyer Valley, and thousands were being evacuated. In one small community in the path of the floodwaters, Forest Hill, the entire population of about 300 was being airlifted to safety in military helicopters, Bligh said.

Search and rescue efforts were hampered by more driving rain, though the bad weather was easing and Bligh said the search would get easier Wednesday.

Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman said authorities were preparing for flooding affecting about 15,000 people in 80 suburbs.

The city is protected by a large dam built upstream after floods devastated downtown in 1974. But the reservoir was full, and officials had no choice but to release water that would cause low-level flooding in the city, Newman said. The alternative was a much worse torrent.

Steph Stewardson, a Brisbane graphic designer, said there was an exodus in a downtown area around lunchtime Tuesday when the river that goes through the city broke its banks. Stewardson, 40, hopped in her car and crossed the swollen river to collect her dog Boo from daycare while waters started covering the boardwalk stretching along its banks.

Stewardson took shelter in her house, and plans to stay there — for now.

“I’m about 800 metres from the river on a hill, so I think it’s going to be OK,” she told the AP.

Queensland has been in the grip of its worst flooding for more than two weeks, after tropical downpours covered an area the size of France and Germany combined. Entire towns have been swamped, more than 200,000 people affected, and the coal industry and farming have virtually shut down.

“The power of nature can still be a truly frightening power and we’ve seen that on display in this country,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.

Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson described the events Monday as “an inland instant tsunami.”

Forecasters said more flash floods could occur through the week.

Deputy Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said rescue efforts were concentrated on towns between Toowoomba and Brisbane, including hardest-hit Murphy’s Creek and Grantham, where about 30 people sought shelter in a school isolated by the floodwaters.

The floods reached a second state Tuesday, with about 4,500 people stranded by high waters in bordering New South Wales, officials said, though the situation was not yet as dire as in Queensland.

Bligh said last week the cost of the floods could be as high as $5 billion, the latest figure available.

--The Associated Press

This photo taken on Jan. 10, 2011 shows damage caused by flash flooding in the Queensland town of Toowoomba. (ALICIA MORRISON/AFP/Getty Images)

An abandoned four-wheel-drive sits in a flooded street on Jan. 11, 2011 in Oakey, Australia. (Dan Proud Photography/Getty Images)