Weather

A tropical storm that prompted flight and ferry cancellations in Taiwan is forecast to reach typhoon strength before hitting the southern China coast on Sunday.

The storm earlier crossed the Philippines, where a parked truck was crushed by a billboard-like structure that was toppled by high winds in Quezon City, north of Manila.

Wipha had maximum sustained winds of 101 kph (63 mph) and gusts up to 126 kph (78 mph) as it passed south of Taiwan on Saturday, the island's Central News Agency said.

More than 20 centimeters (8 inches) of rain was recorded in Hualien and Taitung counties on Taiwan's east coast, the news agency said. Several domestic flights were canceled and service on 14 ferry routes was suspended because of rough seas and strong winds.

Days of record-breaking heat across large swathes of China pushed power demand to an all-time high in excess of 1.5 billion kilowatts on Wednesday (Jul 16), energy officials said, with temperatures forecast to feel like 50 degrees Celsius in some areas on Thursday.

An arc of sweltering heat stretching from the densely populated city of Chongqing in the southwest to Guangzhou on the coast has enveloped an area home to over 200 million people in recent days.

A subtropical high pressure system, which causes warm and dry weather, drove temperatures at eight weather stations in the northwest and southwest of China to record highs in the last two days, state media said on Thursday, citing national weather authorities.

"The power system is holding up so far," said Chim Lee, a senior energy and climate change specialist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

At least three people were killed and more than 1,000 evacuated Thursday after South Korea was hit by torrential rains, officials said, with one region pummeled by the most rainfall per hour since full records began.

South Korea typically experiences monsoon rains in July, but three areas in the country's South Chungcheong province this week saw some of the heaviest hourly downpours on record, official weather data showed.

Three people were killed Thursday, the Ministry of Interior and Safety said, all in South Chuncheong province.

• A yellow weather warning for thunderstorms has been issued across large parts of the UK, including London, the Midlands, and the North East and West of England, from Friday evening until Saturday.
• The Met Office predicts torrential rain, with potential for 20-30mm in less than an hour and up to 90mm in three hours in some areas, which could cause travel disruption and flooding.
• This follows a period of high temperatures, with London forecast to reach 30C on Friday, and the incoming heat is described as more humid.
• Several water companies, including Southern Water, South East Water, and Thames Water, are implementing hosepipe bans across various regions of England.
• These restrictions are in response to exceptionally dry weather, with England experiencing its driest start to the year since 1976, and drought status declared in the East and West Midlands.

One person died and 13 others were injured, including eight children, after being struck by lightning on Wednesday in New Jersey, officials said.

The strike hit the ground near a group at the Black Knight Bowbenders archery range, a well-known community site that regularly hosts events, Jackson Township Mayor Michael Reina told ABC News' New York station, WABC.

This was the twelfth lightning fatality this year.

A severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the area Wednesday evening.

Much of northwest and central New Jersey was also under flood watches through Wednesday night, with storms expected to produce heavy downpours following a deadly deluge earlier this week.

Slow-moving thunderstorms packed with heavy rain and strong winds triggered dangerous flash flooding in parts of the Tri-State area Monday evening, swallowing roadways, parking lots and subway stations.

The storms prompted New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to declare a state of emergency, "given flash flooding and high levels of rainfall in parts of the state."

He's urging residents to stay indoors and avoid unnecessary travel.

Heavy rain and strong winds have lashed parts of New Zealand as a cold front moved east across the country, and authorities warn conditions could worsen over the next 24 hours, triggering floods and landslides.

The northern regions of both the South Island and North Island of the country could be severely affected by the wild weather, the country's weather bureau said on Friday.

New Zealand's MetService said the wind would pick up from Friday afternoon, with gusts of up to 120km/h forecast for some regions. There could be severe thunderstorms later on Friday, MetService's Heather Keats said.

Image credit: JMA/Himawari-9, RAMMB/CIRA, Acquired at 03:00 UTC on July 11, 2025

Tokyo was hit by a torrential downpour Thursday evening during rush hour, with the Meteorological Agency warning residents to prepare for heavy rain, flooding and lightning.

The agency recorded 120 millimeters of rain in Suginami Ward and about 100 mm in Setagaya Ward at around 7 p.m. — enough to cause disasters. The agency only announces warnings of this kind when there is enough rain in a short period of time to trigger landslides or flooding.

The weather agency is forecasting up to 150 mm of rain in the 24 hours through 6 p.m. Friday in the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo, and 100 mm for the Koshin region of Yamanashi and Nagano prefectures.

The Tokyo Fire Department received a call that a vehicle driving into a flooded underpass in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward was stalled, NHK reported, adding that first responders are trying to rescue people possibly trapped in the car.

Video : https://xcancel.com/i/status/1943326597840515436

No injuries were reported after an intense night of stormy weather unfolded in central Alberta on Wednesday night, but once the storms passed, one couple was left with a strange video of something bright and shiny a few hundred metres from their home that they could not make sense of.

Global News showed the video to Frank Florian, senior manager of planetarium and space sciences at the TELUS World of Science in Edmonton.

He described it as “an incredible video” of something “very strange associated with severe weather conditions.”

Florian said the events are believed to unfold when there is plasma — a superheated gas — confined to a small area.

“Lightning itself is a plasma,” he said. “You have an electrical path going through the sky from the cloud to the Earth, kind of meet up in the middle and it superheats the air really, really quickly, and it creates a plasma

The latest hot spell is not expected to be quite as warm, but is forecast to last longer and cover a broader area.

It will be the third heatwave in four weeks after two weekends of hot conditions for much of the country in the final weeks of June, which was the hottest on record across England.

The Met Office is predicting many areas could see temperatures 10C above the seasonal average.

Western Europe sweltered through its hottest June on record last month, as "extreme" temperatures blasted the region in punishing back-to-back heatwaves, the EU climate monitor Copernicus said Wednesday.

Globally, this past June was the third warmest on record, continuing a blistering heat streak in recent years as the planet warms as a result of humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases.

The previous hottest June was in 2024 and the second hottest was in 2023, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

Sweltering extremes were particularly pronounced in Europe, which is warming several times faster than the global average.

A man and two children were killed in a record-breaking flash flood that swept through a village in New Mexico on Tuesday, local officials said.

The three were "swept downstream by the unprecedented floodwaters that struck" the Village of Ruidoso, village officials said in a statement.

The National Weather Service in Albuquerque said early data placed the river's crest at 20.24 feet on Tuesday afternoon, which would break the record of 15.86 feet that was set on July 20, 2024.

Torrential rains from tropical storm Danas caused flash floods and landslides across China even as large parts of the country continued to reel from floods and heatwaves.

Danas, downgraded from a typhoon after killing at least two people in Taiwan, made landfall on China’s eastern coast early on Wednesday, unleashing heavy rains and powerful winds across the provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian.

Packing winds of around 80kmph at its centre, Danas prompted authorities to shut schools, cancel over 100 ferry services, and warn residents along the southern coast to stay indoors.

State broadcaster CCTV reported that some areas could get up to 300mm of rain, increasing the risk of flash floods in port cities like Fuzhou and Xiamen.

Danas, which made landfall in Budai Township of Chiayi County in southern Taiwan as a typhoon late Sunday night before weakening to a tropical storm early Monday morning, left two people dead and 334 injured, according to the Central Emergency Operation Center (CEOC).

The two fatalities occurred in Tainan, where the storm brought heavy winds and torrential rain.

A land warning for Tropical Storm Danas could be issued in Taiwan as early as late Saturday, as the storm's outer bands begin bringing heavier rain to southeastern regions, including Hualien, Taitung and the Hengchun Peninsula, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA).

As of 11 a.m., the storm was located approximately 410 kilometers west-southwest of Eluanbi, moving north-northeast at a speed of 8 to 13 kilometers per hour, the CWA reported. A sea warning has already been issued.

It was carrying maximum sustained winds near its center of 72 kph, with gusts of up to 101 kph, according to the CWA.

Experts say human-driven climate change is causing more frequent and intense extreme weather events, from droughts to heatwaves and hailstorms.

Temperatures plunged in mountainous areas inland from Rize, a town on Turkey's northeastern Black Sea coast about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the border with Georgia.

Gencaga Karafazlioglu, a journalist in Rize, said he had never before seen snow in July.

The three South American countries have all recorded sharply below-zero temperatures as the polar air originated from Antarctica and swept across the region.

In Argentina, at least nine homeless people have died from the cold this winter, according to NGO Proyecto 7.

The capital Buenos Aires recorded its lowest temperature since 1991 at -1.9 degrees Celcius (28.6 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, while the coastal city of Miramar saw snow for the first time in 34 years. Further south, the town of Maquinchao recorded -18C on Tuesday.

Electricity demand caused cuts across Buenos Aires, leaving thousands without power for over 24 hours in some areas.

Northern and western China remain on high alert as torrential rain threatens to bring more flash flooding and landslides, following weather-related deaths in other parts of the country.

Red alerts were in force on Thursday as rains made their way to Gansu province in the northwest and then up to Liaoning province in the northeast.

A rare snowfall in the driest place on Earth has halted operations of one of the world's premier telescope arrays, and climate change may mean the observatory will face more extreme weather events like this in the future.

The snow has blanketed part of the Atacama Desert, which gets less than an inch of rainfall per year and is home to home the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a large network of radio telescopes in northern Chile.

The phenomenon was accompanied by heavy rainfall that occurred farther north, causing a stream to swell and damage several properties. Schools were ordered to close, and power outages and landslides were reported. So far, no casualties have been reported. A weather event of this magnitude has not been seen in nearly a decade.

As of Friday, ALMA reported the snowstorm remained active over the Chajnantor Plateau, so scientific operations continued to be suspended to protect the antennas from extreme weather conditions. Early Thursday morning, the observatory activated its "survival mode" safety protocol: In addition to the snowfall, temperatures had plummeted to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 12  degrees Celsius) — with a wind chill of minus 18 F (minus 28 C) — making work at the high-altitude camp extremely difficult.

On Monday, the website for the federal government’s 35-year old Global Change Research Program—an entity that is required to release periodic reports concerning the environmental change in the Earth’s climate—went dark.

The program is part of an interagency effort to, among other things, create an authoritative report known as the National Climate Assessment every four years on international and national climate science to better inform politicians and local decision-makers. The program also produces a yearly update for Congress.

The removal of the website is the latest in a string of attacks on the Global Change Research Program by the Trump administration. In April, the Trump administration cut staffing and funding at the program.

Later that month, the administration suddenly dismissed all of the scientists that were working on the sixth National Climate Assessment, which was set to be released in 2028. This included Rachel Cleetus, the senior policy director with the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“It’s an honor to be invited to participate,” said Cleetus, who, like most other scientists working on the assessment, was a volunteer. “It was a real disappointment not just to see the effort disbanded, but there’s been no word from the administration about what they intend to do.”

Egypt’s capital, Cairo and the Giza governorate experienced moderate to heavy rainfall in several areas on Tuesday – an unexpected occurrence due to the searing heatwave that has gripped the nation.

Meteorological experts had previously confirmed that Tuesday would see high temperatures continue across most regions, with very hot and humid weather during the day. Northern coastal areas were expected to be milder but still humid, while nights and early mornings would remain moderately warm.

The Director General of Forecasts and Early Warning for Weather Risks at the Meteorological Authority, Mahmoud Shahin, told Youm7 that increased humidity today would make the actual temperatures feel two-three degrees Celsius higher.