Rain-packed Tropical Storm Lee forms off U.S. Gulf Coast

Tropical Storm Lee over the Gulf of Mexico on September 2, 2011. (AFP/Getty Images)

MIAMI — A large storm system churning in the Gulf Of Mexico grew Friday into Tropical Storm Lee, beginning a weekend-long assault that could bring up to 50 centimetres of rain in some spots from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle.

The storm was expected to make landfall on the central Louisiana coast late Saturday and turn east toward New Orleans, where it would provide the biggest test of rebuilt levees since Hurricane Gustav struck in 2008.

Residents who have survived killer hurricanes such as Betsy, Camille and Katrina didn't expect Lee to live up to that legacy.

"It's a lot of rain. It's nothing, nothing to Katrina," said Malcolm James, 59, a federal investigator in New Orleans who lost his home after levees broke during Katrina in August 2005 and had to be airlifted by helicopter.

Lee comes less than a week after Hurricane Irene killed more than 40 people from North Carolina to Maine and knocked out power to millions. It was too soon to tell if Hurricane Katia, out in the Atlantic, could endanger the U.S.

By Friday evening, the outer bands of Lee, the 12th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, already began dumping rain over southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi and Alabama.

The storm's biggest impact, so far, has been in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields. About half the Gulf's normal daily oil production has been cut as rigs were evacuated, though oil prices were down sharply Friday on sour economic news.

Federal authorities said 169 of the 617 staffed production platforms have been evacuated, along with 16 of the 62 drilling rigs. That's reduced daily production by about 666,000 barrels of oil and 0.05 billion cubic metres of gas.

Tropical storm warnings were issued from Alabama to Texas and flash flood warnings extended along the Alabama coast into the Florida Panhandle.

The National Hurricane Center said the centre of Lee was about 265 kilomters west-southwest west-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River on Friday and moving north at 7 kph.

Forecasters say that Lee's maximum sustained winds had increased slightly throughout the day to 75 kph, and could get stronger.

Governors in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as the mayors of New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi, declared states of emergency. evacuations.

The water-logged Lee was tantalizingly close to Texas but hopes dimmed for relief from the state's worst drought since the 1950s as the storm's forecast track shifted east. Forecasters said it could bring drenching rains to Mississippi and Alabama early next week.

On Grand Isle, Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island, people kept an eye on the storm that was already bringing rain there. It's not as frightening as having a Category 2 or 3 hurricane bearing down, said June Brignac, owner of the Wateredge Beach Resort.

"But we're still concerned with all the rain that's coming in, causing possible flooding of the highway going out. If we don't leave, we may be trapped here until it's completely past," she said.

- Associated Press

Powerful typhoon hits China

Nanmadol's arrival in parts of China on Thursday has caused two deaths, four missing, and forced the evacuations of 138,000 people in Fujian Province, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Nanmadol is the 11th and strongest typhoon to hit China this year.


Policemen and residents run as waves from a tidal bore surge past a barrier on the banks of Qiantang River in Haining, Zhejiang province. (Reuters Photo)


Spectators are swept by huge waves while watching tides of Qiantang River at a dike. (Getty Images)


Residents run away as waves from a tidal bore surge past a barrier and a vehicle on the banks of Qiantang River in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. (Reuters Photo)


People walk in a flooded street as Typhoon Nanmadol moves over Checheng, Pingtung County, southern Taiwan. (Reuters Photo)


Partially submerged vehicles are seen as residents walk on a flooded street amid heavy rain brought by tropical storm Nanmadol in Putian, Fujian province. (Reuters Photo)

102 people killed in flooding across southwest Nigeria

People queue to pass through a make-shift bridge after heavy flooding swept away a connecting bridge in Nigeria's south-west city of Ibadan. Aug. 30, 2011. (Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye)

LAGOS—Flash flooding across Nigeria’s southwest killed at least 102 people in the last week, the country’s Red Cross said Wednesday.

Some 1,500 people remain displaced by the torrential downpours, officials said.

The major flood hit hardest in Oyo state’s capital of Ibadan. Heavy rains there on Friday made a local dam overflow, sending water crashing through the informal settlements surrounding the city. The water also damaged three bridges in the area, trapping people in their neighbourhoods, said Tunde Adebiyi, an official with Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency.

Many homes were poorly constructed, meaning they simply washed away when the water rushed through, said Umar Mairiga, an official with the Nigerian Red Cross.

“I think in the process a lot of them were washed away by the rainwater and others were trapped in collapsed buildings,” Mairiga said Wednesday.

Mairiga said it took time to get a proper casualty figure as water levels in some areas remain high as seasonal rains continue throughout Africa’s most populous nation.

Nigeria’s emergency agency had warned that rains will be heavier this year than last year. In an assessment after the flooding, the agency said more flooding would be likely in areas with inadequate drainage and improperly disposed trash, a common problem in Nigerian neighbourhoods where zoning laws are rarely heeded or enforced.

Last year, some 500,000 people were displaced nationwide by floods in Nigeria. Nigeria’s rainy season lasts roughly from June to September. The rains paused for most of August this year, however, only starting again within the last week.

- Jon Gambrell Associated Press

Haiti's capital may dodge worst of Tropical Storm Emily

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Forecasters say Tropical Storm Emily will drop a huge amount of rain on the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

But it appears the worst of the storm will largely spare Haitian capital, where hundreds of thousands of people are sill homeless from last year's earthquake.

Michel Davison of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says parts of the Dominican Republic and rural Haiti could see up to 50.8 cm of rain over the next 36 hours.

Emily is expected to reach the southwestern Dominican coast late Wednesday. If it clears the mountains that divide Hispaniola, the storm is expected to then track across northern Haiti.

--The Associated Press

Haiti braces for possible flooding from storm

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Tropical Storm Emily brushed past Puerto Rico and set its sights on the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where more than 630,000 people are still without shelter after last year's earthquake.

A "steady shield of rain" should reach the island of Hispaniola shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti around noon Wednesday and the rainfall should worsen by late afternoon, said John Dlugoenski, senior meteorologist with Accuweather.com.

"The biggest threat to lives is probably the flooding," Dlugoenski said.

Civil defence officials and the military in the Dominican Republic have already begun moving people out of high-risk zones ahead of the storm. Haitian authorities urged people to conserve food and safeguard their belongings.

In Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince, Jislaine Jean-Julien, a 37-year-old street merchant displaced by the January 2010 earthquake, said she was praying the storm would pass her flimsy tent without knocking it over.

"For now, God is the only saviour for me," Jean-Julien said at the edge of a crowded encampment facing the quake-destroyed National Palace. "I would go some place else if I could but I have no place else to go."

Haitian emergency authorities set aside a fleet of 22 large white buses in the event they needed to evacuate people from flooded areas. Emergency workers would then bus the people to dozens of schools, churches and other buildings that will serve as shelters.

"We're working day and night to be able to respond quickly in case we have any disasters," said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of Haiti's Civil Protection Agency.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said up to 25 centimetres of rain could fall in some parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which could cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides in areas of mountainoust terrain.

Emergency workers, both Haitian and foreign, also sent out text messages to cellphone users, alerting them to the approaching storm and to take precautions such as staying with friends or relatives if that were an option.

Such advisories are not uncommon but few in Haiti have the means to heed them because of the crushing poverty.

"This is not the first time we've heard these messages," said Alexis Boucher, a 29-year-old man who lives in Place Boyer, a public square that became a camp after the earthquake. "We receive these messages and yet we still don't have anywhere to go."

A slow-moving storm that triggered mudslides and floods in Haiti killed at least 28 people in June.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti notified its 11,500 troops to be on standby in case they need to respond, said Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, a spokeswoman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies also, put emergency teams on standby, which have access to relief supplies already in place for up to 125,000 people in seaside towns throughout the country.

In the Dominican Republic's southern tourist districts, workers at hotels and restaurants gathered up umbrellas, tables, chairs, and anything else that might be blown away.

Capt. Frank Castillo, dock master of the Marina Casa de Campo in the southeastern tourist city of La Romana, and his crew helped boat owners secure their vessels in slips or pull them ashore.

In Puerto Rico, there were no reports of major damage or injuries and no immediate demand for the nearly 400 schools that were converted into emergency shelters around the island.

Gov. Luis Fortuno had declared a state of emergency and most government offices were closed. Ahead of the storm, people cleared water and other emergency supplies from store shelves and tourists fled the small Puerto Rican islands of Culebra and Vieques.

But most of the island saw no more than sporadic gusts and showers.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm was heading west-northwest at 22 km/h early Wednesday. The path would bring Emily's centre over Hispaniola by Wednesday afternoon or Thursday. Both countries, but especially Haiti, are prone to devastating floods.

Early Wednesday, the storm was about 295 kilometres southeast of Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. It had maximum sustained winds of 85 km/h.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the southeast Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. A tropical storm watch for the U.S. Virgin Islands was discontinued Wednesday.

--The Associated Press

Deadly Korean landslides bring landmine warning

South Korean soldiers shovel mud after a flood caused by heavy rains hit the area around an apartment complex in Seoul on Thursday. Tens of thousands of South Korean troops joined a massive clean-up after record-breaking rainfall killed dozens. (PARK JI-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images)

SEOUL, South Korea - Thousands of rescuers dug through thick mud for survivors of deadly landslides and flooding as South Korea's military warned Thursday that buried land mines may have slid down mountains weakened by rain.

Massive rainfall in Seoul and surrounding areas since Tuesday has killed at least 47 people, and another four were missing. The rain stopped or decreased Thursday, but more was forecast until Friday morning.

At a mountain where a deadly slide hit Wednesday, digging for missing people was halted Thursday until the rain stopped because the Defence Ministry said mines placed there in the 1960s could have shifted. Soldiers with metal detectors were waiting to search for the mines, said Yoon Yong-sam, a spokesman for the air force, which planted the land mines around an air defence base on the mountain.

A defence ministry official said earlier that 10 mines could have been pushed down Wumyeon Mountain. The official declined to be named because of policy. Another ministry official, spokesman Kim Min-seok, played down the immediate risk because a concrete wall on the hillside could be stopping the mines from reaching rescue workers.

South Korea's military dug up many land mines on the mountain between 1999 and 2006, but about 10 couldn't be accounted for, officials said. Fences around the base have warnings about unaccounted land mines.

There were also fears of land mines in northern provinces also hit by flooding and slides, prompting the Joint Chiefs of Staff to order mine-search operations where needed.

The landslide Wednesday in southern Seoul killed at least 16 people. About 5,000 firefighters, soldiers, police officers and others mobilized Thursday to try to find any survivors and clean walls of mud piled in residential areas near the base of the mountain, emergency official Kim Wu-min said.

Bae Jin-sun, a 27-year-old who works in southern Seoul, said she was worried about the safety of rescue workers near the mountain.

"There is still the possibility of a land mine falling through the cracks," she said.

Footage by YTN television network showed excavators removing a mass of mud and fallen tree parts and rescuers in raincoats shovelling up the dirt piled up near an apartment. Uniformed soldiers and firefighters wearing cotton gloves used their hands to pull out rocks and tree branches from the mud.

Another landslide early Wednesday killed 10 college students sleeping in a resort cabin in Chuncheon, north of Seoul. The students from Inha University in Incheon, just west of Seoul, were volunteering at a local elementary school.

The National Emergency Management Agency reported 18 more deaths because of a stream flooding and landslides elsewhere in towns near Seoul. No deaths of foreigners have been reported.

The rainfall left almost 5,000 people homeless, flooded about 1,380 houses and caused power outages at more than 125,000 homes throughout the country, the National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement Thursday.

The 17 inches (440 millimeters) of rain that fell on Seoul on Tuesday and Wednesday was about 15 times more than the average two-day rainfall at this time of year, according to the state-run Korea Meteorological Administration.

-- The Associated Press

Vehicles are submerged in floodwater after heavy rain in Seoul on Thursday.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

People work to restore a road damaged by a landslide in Seoul on Thursday. South Koreans were cautioned about rogue landmines and explosives after a series of deadly landslides in and around the capital Seoul swamped military sites. (REUTERS/Truth Leem )

Thousands of rescuers used heavy machinery and shovels Thursday to clear mud and search for survivors. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean soldiers remove debris at a damaged apartment. (AP Photo/Bae Jung-hyun, Yonhap)

River of mud buries sleeping students in Korean landslide

A street in Seoul after torrential rain pounding South Korea triggered landslides that killed dozens of people. (JANG SEUNG-YOON/AFP/Getty Images)

SEOUL, South Korea - Walls of mud barrelling down a hill buried 10 college students sleeping in a resort cabin and flash floods submerged the streets and subway stations in Seoul, killing at least 32 people Wednesday in South Korea's heaviest rains this year.

The students were engulfed by a landslide in Chuncheon, about 68 miles (110 kilometres) northeast of Seoul, said fire marshal Byun In-soo. A married couple and a convenience store owner also died.

Witnesses interviewed on television said the landslide sounded like a massive explosion or a freight train. They described people screaming as buildings were carried away by rivers of mud.

About 670 firefighters, soldiers, police and others rushed to rescue those trapped and extract the dead from the mud and wreckage in Chuncheon, where 24 others were injured and several buildings destroyed.

In southern Seoul, 16 people died when mud crashed through homes at the foot of a mountain, the National Emergency Management Agency said. Three others also died after a stream just south of the capital flooded, and 10 people were reported missing throughout the country, the agency said in a statement.

Fast-moving mudwaters filled the streets in Seoul on Wednesday, sending residents scrambling to the roofs of their partially submerged cars.

Water filled some subway stations and spewed from sewers. TV images showed people in one flooded subway station using shovels, brooms and a wooden board in an effort to keep more rain from coming in.

Footage showed officials rescuing hikers stranded on mountainsides. People plodded down streets covered with knee-deep water, many barefoot, their pants rolled up. In Seoul's centre, cars were restricted from entering the lower part of a submerged two-level bridge.

The heavy rain since Tuesday left about 620 people homeless and flooded 720 houses and about 100 vehicles throughout South Korea, the emergency management agency said.

About 17 inches (440 millimeters) of rain fell on Seoul and more than 13 inches (340 millimeters) on Chuncheon in the last two days, about 15 times more than the average two-day rainfall at this time of year, according to the state-run Korea Meteorological Administration.

Weather officials said another 10 inches (254 millimeters) could fall in northern South Korea, including Seoul, through Friday.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency issued a traffic emergency, mobilizing more officers to deal with the inclement weather.

Seoul, a bustling capital of 10 million, shut down portions of two major highways stretching along each side of the main Han River because of high water levels, said disaster official Kim Ji-hwan.

A dam located just east of Seoul was discharging 16,400 tons of water per second, said Cha Jun-ho from the Han River Flood Control Office. The dam already discharged about 1,000 tons per second days before the recent downpours.

People in Seoul, where smartphones are ubiquitous, posted dozens of photos on Twitter and Facebook showing inundated streets and mud-covered cars. Many complained online that Seoul had neglected to prepare for the downpours.

--The Associated Press

People try to climb on top of a car on a submerged road in Seoul. (AP Photo/Yonhap)

Damaged cars are seen at a village after a landslide and heavy rainfall in Seoul July 27, 2011. (REUTERS/Park Mun-ho/Newsis)

Rescue workers and residents try to escape floodwaters after a river burst its banks following heavy rains in Gwangju, about 40 km southeast of Seoul. (REUTERS/Kang Jong-Min/Newsis )

South Korean soldiers begin the clean-up in Seoul. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Cars are submerged by floodwaters along a Seoul street. (Photo credit should read YANG HOE-SEONG/AFP/Getty Images)

South Korean rescue workers in Seoul. (AP Photo/Yonhap, Kim Ju-sung)

Southwestern U.S. headed for a ‘perpetual drought’

A family looks on as a dust storm converges on downtown Phoenix, July 5, 2011. (Mark J. Rebilas/US PRESSWIRE)

A 160-kilometre wide dust storm, corn shrivelling in Georgia fields and Texas blackouts are all harbingers of an unstoppable force geophysicists call "perpetual drought."

At least the terrible Dust Bowl years of the 1930s in North America ended, Dr. Richard Seager told the Toronto Star on Thursday. This one won’t.

The U.S. Drought Monitor computer tracking tags the parched conditions in Texas and Oklahoma as an extraordinary drought, with the rest of the stretch from Arizona to Florida not much better.

Losses in Texas alone, to cattle and wheat, could reach $3 billion U.S., state officials said. Rainfall in Oklahoma is 28 per cent of normal.

In parts of Arizona, it’s half of what it should be. The July 5 dust storm, the worst in 30 years, shut down Phoenix Sky Harbour International Airport and coated the city in a crust of dirt.

All 254 counties of Texas have been declared natural disaster areas. In some place, salt buildup on power lines not swept away by rain has caused blackouts.

“The current drought has been running for less than a year,” said Seager of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. The cyclical arrival of the La Niña weather pattern brought it and will eventually move on.

But more ominous and catastrophic is the permanent spike in temperatures that is making southwestern North American too feeble to bounce back.

“Beyond the year-to-year variability, the entire region from California to the southern plains is getting dryer. It may not be more severe than what we have now, but it will be more persistent,” Seager said.

By the middle of this century, he said, the drought state of the southern United States will be permanent.

“There will still be wet years. There will be dry years. But the net flux, which supplies the moisture to the soil, is going to reduce from 20 to 40 per cent.”

Unlike the Dirty Thirties drought, which lasted seven years, the decade-long drought in the 1950s or even the “megadroughts” of the 13^th and 16^th centuries — all of them La Niña phenomena — this one is triggered by man-made gases.

“As long as the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stays where it is, we have a new equilibrium,” said Seager.

Even if all CO² emissions dropped to zero overnight “significant drying would still occur.”

And while farmers have compensated for dry spells since the 1930s with irrigation, it’s an expensive and gasoline-burning way to spread water around.

“As the century progresses, it will be harder and harder to keep the productivity up.”

- Lesley Ciarula Taylor, Staff Reporter

Downpour cancels flights, shuts subways in Beijing

A flooded stairway at a subway station in central Beijing on Thursday. (REUTERS/China Daily)

BEIJING - Parts of Beijing have been flooded by torrential rain, and airport officials say the downpour forced the cancellation of 150 flights.

Water poured into underground crossings and subway stations and submerged cars in low-lying areas Thursday afternoon. Some parts of the city received 2 inches (50 millimeters) of rain in just a few hours, sending crowds scrambling for whatever shelter they could find.

Flooded roadways snarled traffic and some subway stations were temporarily closed.

Beijing has a generally dry climate, although summer storms can be violent.

Catastrophic flooding this year in central and eastern China has left at least 175 dead and 86 missing and causing 35 billion yuan ($5 billion) in direct economic losses.

--The Associated Press

Torrential rains in parts of central and southern China, including Beijing, have ended a drought in many areas, but now threaten the Yangtze River basin and nearby provinces with floods and mudslides that have killed at least 105 people. (REUTERS/David Gray)

Vehicles drive along a submerged road in Beijing on Thursday (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

A giant video screen casts its light on cyclists and pedestrians at a Beijing crossing (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

A submerged road in Beijing. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

Farmland faces flooding in Manitoba

Volunteers sandbag on the southern dike of the Assiniboine River in Brandon, Manitoba on Monday, May 9, 2011. The high water levels of the Assiniboine River are threatening surrounding communities. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)

BRANDON, Man. - A municipal reeve says a controlled release of water from the swollen Assiniboine River in Manitoba is expected to flood 300 homes — twice as many as originally expected.

Kam Blight says the release will also devastate high-value farmland that produces a large share of the province's vegetable and specialty crops.

Area residents are frantically trying to find sandbags and remove what they can from their houses before the release, which could come as early as Wednesday.

They have lots of questions about how the flood is being handled and why their area is being sacrificed to preserve other regions.

Meanwhile, officials in Brandon in western Manitoba say dikes appear to be holding back the rising river.

They say the flow may have actually peaked.

A beaver rests on a dike on the south side of the Assiniboine River in Brandon, Man. as volunteers and machinery work in the background on Monday May 9, 2011. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Brandon Sun - Tim Smith)

Crews sandbag a business on the north bank of the Assiniboine River in Brandon, Man. on Monday, May 9, 2011. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)

Bryan Ezako, owner of a home which is surrounded by water on Golden Oak Cove, boats to his home near St. Francis Xavier, Man., Monday, May 9, 2011. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)

Military personnel from the C Company, 2PPCLI, help sandbag just outside Poplar Point in Manitoba, Monday, May 9, 2011. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)

Work is done to build up the dikes of the Portage Diversion just outside Portage La Prairie in Manitoba, Monday, May 9, 2011. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)

Crews set up an Aqua dam on top of the southern dike of the Assiniboine River in Brandon, Manitoba on Monday, May 9, 2011. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)