Weather Problems/DIsasters Continue Around The World, It's Not Just the United States

Tornado damage in Guangzhou, China. 

 As I periodically like to do, here's an update on the latest weather disasters and weirdness afflicting the world outside the United States.  

It's not just the Grand Ole U.S. of A having its trouble with tornadoes and such. 

CHINESE TORNADO/FLOOD

China is also dealing with tornadoes. A powerful twister hit the huge city of Guangzhou, killing five people, injuring about three dozen and trashing about 140 factory buildings.

Guangzhou is a little northwest of Hong Kong and has a population of about 15.3 million. 

Tornadoes happen fairly frequently in China, with average of about 100 twisters a year. Nearly 1,300 people have died in Chinese tornadoes since 1961.

The province around Guangzhou has also suffered severe flooding in recent weeks. The floods have killed four people and forced 110,000 people to relocate, CNN reports. 

The weather problems in China continued this week. A massive squall line crossed much of central and southern China, packing destructive winds and large hail 

In, hail as much as 5.5  inches in diameter was reported in Sandu, Guizhou Province. That's somewhere between the diameter of a grapefruit and a one-gallon paint can

In  Guangdong province, flooding caused a busy highway to collapse, killing at least 19 people, AccuWeather reported. 

TANZANIA/KENYA FLOOD

Flooding in Tanzania has caused at least 155 deaths in the past two weeks and displaced 200,000 others.

The inundations in Tanzania are worst along the coast and in the capital, Dar es Salaam.  

The flooding in Kenya was not quite as deadly but still calamitous

Per the Washington Post:

"Social media sites were awash Thursday with images and videos of people on rooftops of submerged houses, Residents across Nairobi neighborhoods used boats to rescue those stranded by rising floodwaters. 

"Venant Ndighila, the emergency response manager of the Kenya Red Cross, said 38 deaths and 11,275 displaced people have been reported across the country. He warned about the accompanying risks, including disease outbreaks and the disruption of goods and services."

April is usually the rainy season in Tanzania and Kenya, but this was beyond the pale. 

This year, water temperatures in the Indian Ocean were above normal, a result of both El Nino and climate change. Warm ocean waters can transport more moisture inland than cooler temperatures, so rainfall becomes heavier and more dangerous. 

SOUTHEAST ASIA HEAT

Dangerous heat has once again built up across huge swaths of Asia.  One city in Vietnam reached 111.2 degrees, tying the record for hottest temperature on record anywhere in that nation. Laos reached 110.5 for the hottest temperature on record there. 

Manilla, Philippines had an all time record high of 101.8 degrees Saturday. 

In Bangladesh, temperatures as hot as 110 degrees have prompted the government to close schools. In India, a long-lasting heat wave has pushed actual temperatures to 115 degrees and the heat index to a highly dangerous 122 to 140 degrees.  There's going to be a death toll from the Indian heat for sure, but we don't have figures on that yet. 

Thailand has had record heat since March. The Washington Post reports more people have died in Thailand of heat stroke so far this year than in all of 2023. 

Records for warmest nights on record have been set in dozens of cities, including Bangkok, as overnight lows dropped only into the mid and upper 80s.

Hot nights are especially dangerous in heat waves because the lack of a cooler nighttime interlude takes a toll on the human body.  This, in turn, increases the death toll in heat waves, which are already the most deadly type of weather disaster on Earth.