Typhoon Fanapi

Typhoon Fanapi first hit Taiwan and then slammed into southern China this past week.  So far the typhoon has killed 54 people however mudslides and flooding have endangered many more people.  There are still 42 people still missing in the aftermath of Fanapi.  I stunning 40 inches of rain hit the southern province in Taiwan and it is thought that 10 of millions of dollars in infrastructure has been destroyed.  Notice how the damages are an estimated value and the deaths and those missing are far more accurate just as we had talked about in class.

Arcadia Flooding

I know we have had flooding in Wisconsin before but I have not seen it this bad in this area (in my lifetime I guess!).  The entire city of Arcadia is flooded with the city center with water levels at 2 to 3 feet.  Governor Jim Doyle has now declared a State of Emergency in Trempeleau county and people have had to be rescued by boats and other safe modes of rescue.  I read I think Rob's blog about media coverage and a state of emergency like this one I guarantee will be news worthy for at least one weak and it will be the same sort of process as we had talked about in class.  They had warned western Wisconcin about the flooding and now the media is covering the "emergency stage" and when the city has cleaned up the media will cover the "recovery" stage. 

What is so interesting is that weather has closed down this entire city, the flooding has closed everything from schools, to churches and even Ashley Furniture closed until safety could be returned to the city.  This is a perfect example of how weather can affect the livelihood of a city and its people.  The rain has also caused flooding all along the Chippewa River including places in Eau Claire County.  I heard today that all of the rain maybe caused a mudslide on the 53 bypass however this is speculation right now. 

Weau has up do date coverage of this at their website.

http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/103606404.html

New York City Storm

You don't hear of severe weather in New York City and severe damage to buildings and trees but this storm whipped through New York yesterday and downed over 1,000 tress, damaged buildings and homes, and killed a women in her car.  The National Weather Service suspected that the storm produced a tornado because of the pattern and the way they trees had fallen.  When reading this I thought of the EF ratings that they talked about at the NWS today and how they determine whether a tornado hit by the pattern on the falled trees.  Researchers have suspected that because the way the numerous trees fell, a tornado was quite possibly present.  The storm covered 14 miles of the city and knocked out power to over 37,000 people and occured during the busy rush hour commute for many people.  Luckily no one was severly hurt and there was only one death. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39238600/ns/weather

UN: 24 dead, 70,000 homeless in Chad flooding

I found this article regarding the flooding in Chad (Africa) really interesting because it had a lot to do with the first chapter of the book.  The floods in Chad left 70,000 people without shelter and the threat of cholera has become dangerously high.  The book talked about LDCs and how they react to natural disasters and I think this article represented this well.  More than 77,000 acres of crops were destroyed and many of the underdevoloped roads have been washed away and are now unpassable to aid workers so much of the aid relief now has to be airlifted to poverty stricen survivors.  It makes you wonder as to how much devastion would have occured if such flooding had taken place in an area in the midwestern United States or somewhere in Europe?



http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/12/chad.flooding/index.html

Italian Mudslide