The death toll from heavy rains and floods that devastated parts of the Philippines over the Christmas weekend has risen to 25, with 26 others still missing, the national disaster response agency said Wednesday. Nearly 400,000 people were affected, with over 81,000 still in shelters and nine others injured, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. Sixteen of the 25 deaths were reported in Northern Mindanao region in the south, while 12 of the 26 missing are from the eastern Bicol region, the council added. Read: 26 Rohingya refugees died at sea making perilous journey: UN A shear line — the point where warm and cold air meet — triggered rains in parts of eastern, central and southern Philippines, the state weather bureau PAGASA said. The weather disturbance disrupted Christmas celebration in affected provinces, with photos from the southern province of Misamis Occidental showing rescuers carrying an elderly woman on a plastic chair as they waded through a flooded street. Some residents in the province were seen hanging on to floaters as coast guard rescuers pulled them across chest-deep flood using a rope. The disaster management council said 1,196 houses were damaged by the floods, while sections of 123 roads and 12 bridges were affected. Some areas remain without power or water supply. While the effect of the shear line has weakened, a new low pressure area may bring moderate to heavy rains within the next 24 hours to the same areas affected by the Christmas weekend floods. The weather bureau said Wednesday that flooding and landslides are likely, especially in areas with significant prior rainfall. Read: Urgently rescue boat carrying upto 200 Rohingyas: ASEAN parliamentarians urge member states, others Each year about 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. The archipelago is located on the “Ring of Fire” along the Pacific Ocean’s rim, where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

Four villages of Fulgazi upazila in Feni were flooded early Monday as the Muhuri River swelled due to heavy rains and upstream water from India. The flood protection embankment collapsed at two points around 2 am at North Doulatpur part of Fulgazi sadar union and flooded Ghaniamora, Bairagpur, North & South Doulatpur villages, according to Water Development Board (WDB). Currently the Muhuri River is flowing 80 centimeters above the danger  level, said Zahir Uddin, Executive Engineer of Feni WDB. Read: Low-lying areas of 5 dists flooded due to tidal surge caused by depression “If the rainfall stops in the Indian side the water level will lower soon. The damaged portions of the embankment will be repaired immediately,” he said.   “Crops, fish, houses and roads of these four villages have been damaged. We are constantly monitoring the situation,” said Abdul Alim, Fulgazi upazila parishad chairman. 

Rivers in the northeastern district of Sylhet swelled following three days of heavy rains in the region and upstream in India, raising fear of another round of flooding this year. Incessant rains since early Saturday sent many parts Sylhet city to go under knee-deep water. Vast areas of the city have been hit by acute waterlogging. Water has also entered households and shops, causing immense sufferings to people living in low-lying areas. Locals complained that waterlogging happened due to poor drainage system in the city. “A downpour for a couple of hours inundates most of the city areas due to incomplete drainage works. Besides, rainwater can’t pass as local influential people have filled up almost all the water bodies,” said Kawsar Mia, a city resident. According to the Flood Forecasting and Warning Center (FFWC), water level is rising fast in rivers flowing through Sylhet and Sunamganj. A temporary flooding is likely to affect these two districts within this week. However, the losses will be minimal as no crop is currently being cultivated in the division’s Haor areas. Read: Sylhet flood situation improves as rivers recede “The current bout of rain will continue till September 6, while another round may drench Sylhet division next week,” said Saeed Ahmad Chowdhury, a senior meteorologist at Sylhet Meteorological Center. Arifuzzaman Bhuiyan, an executive engineer of FFWC, said that another round of flooding is on the horizon. “Heavy rain is ongoing upstream. As a result, floodwater will continue inundating the Teesta basin and Sylhet division for most of this week. But the increased level of water won’t last long,” Arif said. According to forecast by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), seasonal air will cause rain in Sylhet division for the next few days. Besides, a forecast from Bangladesh Water Development Board (WDB) has said that water level in almost all the rivers of the country will rise due to excessive rain in the upstream.   In June, a record-level flooding inundated almost 80 percent area of Sylhet division. The deluge that ravaged the region from June to August claimed more than 80 lives and forced many to flee their flooded homes and take shelter on highways and buildings in whatever little dry places were left. 

The familiar ingredients of a warming world were in place: searing temperatures, hotter air holding more moisture, extreme weather getting wilder, melting glaciers, people living in harm’s way, and poverty. They combined in vulnerable Pakistan to create unrelenting rain and deadly flooding. The flooding has all the hallmarks of a catastrophe juiced by climate change, but it is too early to formally assign blame to global warming, several scientists tell The Associated Press. It occurred in a country that did little to cause the warming, but keeps getting hit, just like the relentless rain. “This year Pakistan has received the highest rainfall in at least three decades. So far this year the rain is running at more than 780% above average levels,” said Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council. “Extreme weather patterns are turning more frequent in the region and Pakistan is not a exception.” Climate Minister Sherry Rehman said “it’s been a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.” Also read: Over 33 mln people, 72 districts of Pakistan affected by floods Pakistan “is considered the eighth most vulnerable country to climate change,” said Moshin Hafeez, a Lahore-based climate scientist at the International Water Management Institute. Its rain, heat and melting glaciers are all climate change factors scientists warned repeatedly about. While scientists point out these classic climate change fingerprints, they have not yet finished intricate calculations that compare what happened in Pakistan to what would happen in a world without warming. That study, expected in a few weeks, will formally determine how much climate change is a factor, if at all. The “recent flood in Pakistan is actually an outcome of the climate catastrophe ... that was looming very large,” said Anjal Prakash, a research director at India’s Bharti Institute of Public Policy. “The kind of incessant rainfall that has happened ... has been unprecedented." Pakistan is used to monsoons and downpours, but “we do expect them spread out, usually over three months or two months,” said the country's climate minister Rehman. There are usually breaks, she said, and not as much rain -- 37.5 centimeters (14.8 inches) falls in one day, nearly three times higher than the national average for the past three decades. “Neither is it so prolonged. ... It’s been eight weeks and we are told we might see another downpour in September.” Also read: Pakistan flooding deaths pass 1,000 in 'climate catastrophe' “Clearly, it’s being juiced by climate change,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts. There’s been a 400% increase in average rainfall in areas like Baluchistan and Sindh, which led to the extreme flooding, Hafeez said. At least 20 dams have been breached. The heat has been as relentless as the rain. In May, Pakistan consistently saw temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit). Scorching temperatures higher than 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) were recorded in places like Jacobabad and Dadu. Warmer air holds more moisture -- about 7% more per degree Celsius (4% per degree Fahrenheit) — and that eventually comes down, in this case in torrents. Across the world “intense rain storms are getting more intense,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. And he said mountains, like those in Pakistan, help wring extra moisture out as the clouds pass. Instead of just swollen rivers flooding from extra rain, Pakistan is hit with another source of flash flooding: The extreme heat accelerates the long-term glacier melting then water speeds down from the Himalayas to Pakistan in a dangerous phenomena called glacial lake outburst floods.   “We have the largest number of glaciers outside the polar region, and this affects us,” climate minister Rehman said. “Instead of keeping their majesty and preserving them for posterity and nature. We are seeing them melt.” Not all of the problem is climate change. Pakistan saw similar flooding and devastation in 2010 that killed nearly 2,000 people. But the government didn’t implement plans to prevent future flooding by preventing construction and homes in flood prone areas and river beds, said Suleri of the country's Climate Change Council. The disaster is hitting a poor country that has contributed relatively little to the world's climate problem, scientists and officials said. Since 1959, Pakistan has emitted about 0.4% of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, compared to 21.5% by the United States and 16.4% by China. “Those countries that have developed or gotten rich on the back of fossil fuels, which are the problem really,” Rehman said. “They’re going to have to make a critical decision that the world is coming to a tipping point. We certainly have already reached that point because of our geographical location.”

Flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains across much of Pakistan have killed nearly 1,000 people and injured and displaced thousands more since mid-June, officials said Saturday. The new death toll came a day after Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif asked for international help in battling deadly flood damage in the impoverished Islamic nation. The monsoon season, which began in June, has lashed Pakistan with particularly heavy rains this year and rescuers have struggled to evacuate thousands of marooned people from flood-hit areas. The crisis has forced the government to declare a state of emergency. Also read: Pakistan seeks international help for flood victims In northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, flooding destroyed the gates of a major water control system at the Swat River, leading to flooding in the districts of Charsadda and Nowshera, said Sania Safi, a top administrator in Charsadda. “We preempted the situation and warned and forced hesitating residents to leave their homes for safety and move to relief camps established at government buildings in safe places,” she said. Safi said there was concern of further rising of the Swat and Kabul rivers, adding to the misery of residents who have already suffered the loss of lives and property. In Nowshera district, local administrator Quratul Ain Wazir said flood waters submerged streets before the gushing waters headed toward low-lying areas. Also read: Official: Flooding in eastern Afghanistan kills at least 9 “Our administration has evacuated many people and taken others to relief camps where government provided beds and food in safe buildings," she said. ... "We will use police to force those hesitant to leave their homes.” Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb said soldiers and rescue organizations were helping people to reach safety in many districts of southern Sindh, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, eastern Punjab and southwestern Baluchistan provinces. “Government has sanctioned sufficient funds to financially compensate the affected people and we will not leave our people alone in this tough time,” she said. Aurangzeb asked wealthy people and relief organizations to come forward with aid to help flood-affected Pakistanis. In response to Sharif's appeal for international aid, the United Nations planned a $160 million flash appeal for donations, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Asim Iftikhar. He said in his weekly briefing Friday that the appeal will be launched Aug. 30. The picturesque Kalam Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is one of the areas most affected by the rains and flooding. Waters from overflowing rivers swept away entire buildings, including an iconic hotel. “The situation is pretty serious as we don't have any road link left with the rest of the province, we don't have electricity, gas and communications network and no relief is reaching here,” said Muzaffar Khan, whose grocery store was swept away along with many other shops. Thousands whose homes were swept away now live in tents, miles away from their inundated villages and towns, after being rescued by soldiers, local disaster workers and volunteers, authorities said. In Baluchistan, Asadullah Nasir, a spokesperson at the provincial disaster management authority said all 34 districts of the impoverish province were badly affected due to the heavy rains and subsequent flooding. He said road networks were destroyed and bridges washed away and relief is possible only with helicopters, which are not often able to operate because of bad weather. He said provincial officials have confirmed 235 deaths but the number was expected to increase significantly after communications are restored. The National Disaster Management Authority in its latest overnight report said 45 people were killed in flood-related incidents from Friday to Saturday. That brought the death toll since mid-June to 982 with 1,456 injured. Monsoon rains were expected to continue this week, mainly in the south and southwest. The season usually runs from July to mid September in Pakistan. Heavy rains and subsequent flash floods have damaged bridges, roads network across Pakistan, disrupting the supply of fruit and vegetables to markets and causing a hike in prices.

Heavy flooding from seasonal rains in eastern Afghanistan overnight left at least nine people dead, swept away homes and destroyed livestock and agricultural land, a provincial official and a villager elder said Sunday. Associated Press video showed villagers in the Khushi district of Logar province south of the Afghan capital of Kabul cleaning up after the flooding, their damaged homes in disarray. Abdullah Mufaker, head of Logar province's Natural Disaster Management Ministry, said it was still unknown how many were killed and injured by the rising waters but that there were at least nine fatalities. Read: 31 dead in India flash floods & landslides “The exact number is not clear for the time being, and the people have gone to remove the dead bodies,” he said. Del Agha, a village elder, said the flooding was unprecedented in the history of Khushi. “It destroyed all the people’s animals, houses and agricultural lands,” he said. "People are homeless, they have been refuged to the mountains.” Last week, heavy rains set off flash floods that killed at least 31 people and left dozens missing in northern Afghanistan.

Flooding and extreme high temperatures have caused multiple deaths in eastern China as summer heat descends earlier than usual. Record-high temperatures have been reported in Zhejiang province, just east of the global business hub of Shanghai, topping out above 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday. The neighboring coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Fujian were also suffering under high heat, while Henan, Sichuan and Heilongjiang further inland saw many hospitalized for heat stroke, with an as-yet unreported number of deaths. Read: China sees record rains, heat as weather turns volatile Floods have also struck much of the country, with three people reported killed and five missing in Sichuan province’s Pingwu county as of midday Wednesday. One person was reported dead and eight missing in Heilongjiang in the northeast. Experts say such extreme weather events are becoming more likely because of climate change. Warmer air can store more water, leading to bigger cloudbursts when it’s released. Hundreds of thousands in south-central China have already been displaced by flooding. The flooding adds to economic woes brought on partly by stringent “zero-COVID” measures restricting travel and disrupting supply chains.

The Yellowstone National Park area's weather forecast the morning of June 12 seemed fairly tame: warmer temperatures and rain showers would accelerate mountain snow melt and could produce “minor flooding." A National Weather Service bulletin recommended moving livestock from low-lying areas but made no mention of danger to people. By nightfall, after several inches of rain fell on a deep spring snowpack, there were record-shattering floods. Torrents of water poured off the mountains. Swollen rivers carrying boulders and trees smashed through Montana towns over the next several days. The flooding swept away houses, wiped out bridges and forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 tourists, park employees and residents near the park. Read: Yellowstone National Park to partly reopen after floods As a cleanup expected to last months grinds on, climate experts and meteorologists say the gap between the destruction and what was forecast underscores a troublesome aspect of climate change: Models used to predict storm impacts do not always keep up with increasingly devastating rainstorms, hurricanes, heat waves and other events. “Those rivers had never reached those levels. We literally were flying blind not even knowing what the impacts would be,” said Arin Peters, a senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service. Hydrologic models used to predict flooding are based on long-term, historical records. But they do not reflect changes to the climate that emerged over the past decade, said meteorologist and Weather Underground founder Jeff Masters. “Those models are going to be inadequate to deal with a new climate,” Masters said. Another extreme weather event where the models came up short was Hurricane Ida, which slammed Louisiana last summer and then stalled over the Eastern Seaboard — deluging parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York with unprecedented rainfall that caused massive flooding. The weather service had warned of a “serious situation” that could turn “catastrophic,” but the predicted of 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) of rain for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania was far short of the 9 to 10 inches (23 to 25 centimeters) that fell. The deadly June 2021 heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest offered another example. Warmer weather had been expected, but not temperatures of up to 116 degrees (47C degrees) that toppled previous records and killed an estimated 600 or more people in Oregon, Washington state and western Canada. The surprise Yellowstone floods prompted a nighttime scramble to close off roads and bridges getting swept away by the water, plus rushed evacuations that missed some people. No one died, somewhat miraculously, as more than 400 homes were damaged or destroyed. As rock slides caused by the rainfall started happening in Yellowstone, park rangers closed a heavily-used road between the town of Gardiner and the park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming. It later washed out in numerous places. The rain and snowmelt was “too much too fast and you just try to stay out of the way,” Yellowstone Deputy Chief Ranger Tim Townsend said. If the road hadn’t been closed “we probably would have had fatalities, unquestionably,” park Superintendent Cam Sholly said. “The road looks totally fine and then it’s like an 80-foot drop right into the river," Sholly said. "No way if someone was driving in the rain at night that they would have seen that and could have stopped.” Rock Creek, which runs through the city of Red Lodge and normally is placid and sometimes just ankle deep, became a raging river. When the weather service issued a flood warning for the creek, the water already had surged over its banks and begun to knock down bridges. By the time the warning was went, “we already knew it was too late,” said Scott Williams, a commissioner for Carbon County, Montana, which borders Yellowstone. Red Lodge resident Pam Smith was alerted to the floods by something knocking around in her basement before dawn. It was her clothes dryer, floating in water pouring through the windows. In a scramble to save keepsakes, Smith slipped on the wet kitchen floor and fell, shattering a bone in her arm. She recalled holding back tears as she trudged through floodwaters with her partner and 15-year-old granddaughter to reach their pickup truck and drive to safety. “I went blank,” Smith said. “I was angry and like, ‘Why didn’t anybody warn us? Why was there no knock on the door? Why didn’t the police come around and say there’s flooding, you need to get out?’” Local authorities say sheriff’s deputies and others knocked on doors in Red Lodge and a second community that flooded. But they acknowledged not everyone was reached as numerous rivers and streams overflowed, swamping areas never known previously to flood. While no single weather event can be conclusively tied to climate change, scientists said the Yellowstone flooding was consistent with changes already documented around the park as temperatures warm. Read:Flood threat moves north as Sydney area emergency eases Those changes include less snowfall in mid-winter and more spring precipitation — setting the stage for flash floods when rains fall on the snow, said Montana State University climate scientist Cathy Whitlock. Warming trends mean spring floods will increase in frequency — even as the region suffers from long-term drought that keeps much of the rest of the year dry, she said. Masters and other experts noted that computer modelling of storms has become more sophisticated and is generally more accurate than ever. But extreme weather by its nature is hard to predict, and as such events happen more frequently there will be many more chances for forecasters to get it wrong. The rate of the most extreme rainstorms has increased by a factor of five, Masters said. So an event with a 1% chance of happening in any given year — commonly referred to as a “one in 100-year” event — now has a 5% chance of happening, he said. “We are literally re-writing our weather history book,” said University of Oklahoma Meteorology Professor Jason Furtado. That has widespread implications for local authorities and emergency officials who rely on weather bulletins to guide their disaster response approaches. If they’re not warned, they can’t act. But the National Weather Service also strives to avoid undue alarm and maintain public trust. So if the service's models show a only a slim chance of disaster, that information is likely left out of the forecast. Weather service officials said the agency's actions with the Yellowstone flooding will be analyzed to determine if changes are needed. They said early warnings that river levels were rising did help officials prepare and prevent loss of life, even if their advisories failed to predict the severity. Computer-based forecasting models are regularly updated to account for new meteorological trends due to climate change, Peters said. Even with those refinements, events like the Yellowstone flooding still are considered low-probability and so often won't make it into forecasts based on what the models say is most likely to occur. “It's really difficult to balance that feeling that you've got that this could get really bad, but the likelihood of it getting really bad is so small,” Peters said. He added that the dramatic swing from drought to flood was hard even for meteorologists to reconcile and called it “weather whiplash." To better communicate the potential for extreme weather, some experts say the weather service needs to change its forecasts to inform the public about low probability hazardous events. That could be accomplished through more detailed daily forecasts or some kind of color-coded system for alerts. “We've been slow to provide that information,” North Carolina State University atmospheric scientist Gary Lackmann said. “You put it on people's radars and they could think about that and it could save lives.”

The government has started the connection work of Bangabandhu Satellite-1 to keep telecommunication and internet services active in the flood affected areas on Sunday. Bangladesh Satellite Company Limited (BSCL) has set up a Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) Hub in Sylhet Hi-Tech Park following the directives of Post and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar. To ensure telecommunication services in the flood-affected areas of Sylhet and Sunamganj districts, 12 VSAT equipment were handed over to the Bangladesh Army on Saturday. VSAT hubs will be set up in Netrokona and North Bengal today. Read: Floods: India extends "support, solidarity" to Bangladesh Besides, preparations are underway to hand over 23 more sets of VSAT equipment to the Sylhet Divisional Commissioner office. Bangabandhu Satellite-1 will also be able to activate the mobile phone network as per the requirement of mobile phone operators. The Post and Telecommunications Division has also launched 12 toll-free helpline numbers for the flood-affected people. The toll free numbers are- Grameenphone -01769177266, 01769177267, 01769177268, Robi- 01852788000, 01852798800, 01852804477, Banglalink- 01987781144, 01993781144, 01995781144, and Teletalk- 01513918096, 01513918097, 01513918098.

The flood situation in Sylhet, Sunamganj, and Netrokona districts may further deteriorate in the next 24 hours, according to the Flood Forecasting & Warning Centre's latest bulletin. According to the forecast circulated Saturday afternoon, water levels in all major rivers of the country continued rising, except the Surma in Sylhet - although may just have been due to being way over the red mark already. Another transboundary river that was flowing way past its danger mark, the Teesta, may also normalise a bit, remaining near or slightly above its danger mark in the next 24 hours. Read: No respite from flood onslaught in north-eastern districts As a result, the flood condition may deteriorate in the low-lying areas of Kurigram, Gaibandha, Bogura, Sirajganj, Jamalpur, Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, and Rangpur districts. As important as the forecast for Bangladesh, medium to heavy and even very heavy rainfall is predicted in the north-eastern region of India, over parts of Assam, Meghalaya, and the Sub-Himalayan parts of West Bengal, in the next 72 hours.