We're Wet; But Parts Of The World Too Hot, Too Dry

Residents of Chennai, India queue up for emergency water supplies
as seen in this photo from Reuters. 

After all that rain we had this week, I certainly didn't have to water my garden in St. Albans last evening.

The water content of my garden is the the most trivial thing in the world compared to weather conditions in some parts of the world.  Here's one: A major Indian city is running out of water.

Chennai, India, has about 4.6 million people and a punishing drought, aggravated in the past two or three months by record heat, has shriveled up its reservoirs.

Which means India is faced with an impossible task: How do you supply that many people with water when there's practically none locally?

As CNN reports:

"With low groundwater levels and insufficient rainwater collection systems, the state government has resorted to trucking water directly into Chennai neighboryoods, where hundreds of thousands of residents wait in line for their meager allocations."

Just as climate scientists have predicted, the water shortages have causes public unrest, with fights breaking out for thin water supplies and people hijacking water trucks.

Climate change, which seems to be intensifying droughts and delaying seasonal monsoon rains in India, is only one ingredient to this mess.

CNN reports there's no good infrastructure to store water in Chennai and other areas of India when the rains do come.

Chennai did manage to get 1.14 inches of rain Thursday, but that is as much as they've had in the previous six months combined. For Chennai, that's really not much rain at all. And a lot of that precipitaiton ran off, since there's no good systems to either store the meager rainfall in reservoirs or tanks.

India more than other countries relies on groundwater, and that's been depleting fast. Wells in groundwater aren't expensive, but as we see, combined with drought, this causes water shortages.

Chennai is the third major city in recent years to flirt with entirely running out of water, and it is the worst of the three.

Sao Paulo, Brazil and its 20 million people nearly very ran out of water in 2014 when reservoir levels dipped to 3 percent of capacity. Cape Town, South Africa nearly ran out of water in 2018. 

EUROPE HEAT

It's not drought so much at the moment in Europe as it is heat. A strong blocked up weather pattern seems destined to steer what could be a record heat wave into much of Europe over the next several days. Heat records for the month of June are threatened, notes the Category 6 blog.

Temperatures in parts of Germany, Belgium, France, the Nethelands and other countries could reach 100 degrees.


nearly ran out of water

Another Summer, And Record Heat Waves In World Are Starting To Pop

People in India wilting in this months record heat.
Photo via Getty Images.

Here in Vermont, we haven't had much in the way of summer heat. At least not yet.

The hottest it's been in Burlington so far this young summer is 85 degrees. And there is no sign yet of any sustained hot weather. It's actually going to be a bit cooler than normal over the next few days.

Last summer, heat waves blossomed in many, many areas of the Northern Hemisphere, including Vermont.  At least six deaths were attributed to the Vermont heat last July, making the hot spell the state's worst weather disaster since Hurricane Irene in 2011.

A lot of the heat waves around the world last year were  attributed to climate change.  At the time, I wondered if this year would be a repeat of those frequent, record setting heat waves.

You wouldn't know it here in Vermont with the cool weather, but the summer is off to a rough start in the Northern Hemisphere. There have already been some big, record setting, dangerous heat waves.

Much of India normally broils in May and June, before the seasonal monsoons hit. This year is no exception, except the heat there is even worse and more dangerous than anyone has seen.  New Delhi reached 118 degrees, the city's hottest reading on record.

In the lower elevations of India,  a heat wave is declared if daily temperatures reach or exceed 104 degrees. This heat wave is threatening to become the longest on record. The Hindustan Times said this hot spell has lasted 32 days so far.  The record longest heat wave lasted 33 days, so they're very close.

Elsewhere, Finland and parts of Russia just recorded the hottest weather on record for so early in the season.

Record heat has engulfed the West Coast, too. For three days in a row, numerous towns and cities in the San Francisco Bay Area have seen record high temperatures.  It got up to 100 degrees at the San Francisco airport Monday, tying the record for the fifth hottest day on record there.

That 100 degree reading is also the first time it's been that hot in San Francisco in a month other than September, which is when the Bay Area gets its most intense heat waves.  Monterey, California reached 97 degrees, the hottest day on record for meteorological summer (June-August.)

The heat is extending northward into Oregon and Washington, too.

In far southern Texas, record heat combined wit stifling humidity to create a heat index of 128 degrees, which of course is damn dangerous.

It looks like it will be a long, hot summer. If not in Vermont, then elsewhere

Cyclone Fani Continues Tragic Storm Year in Indian Ocean.

Satellite view shows extremely powerful Cyclone Fani near the eastern
India coast a couple days ago. That small eye and those fineine banding
features in the clouds surrounding the eye indicate a very strong storm.

As expected, powerful Cyclone Fani struck eastern India on Friday, leaving a long trail of destruction and death.

As CNN reports, the cyclone caused at least seven deaths in eastern India, and that toll is expected to rise. Al Jazeera was reporting as many as 25 deaths as of Saturday morning.

Cyclones in the Indian Ocean are what we in the United States call hurricanes - they're the same thing.

Cyclone Fani made landfall as basically a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 125 mph near the city of Puri.  Videos of the storm are at the bottom of this post.

At least 1 million people in India were evacuated ahead of the storm.  While the storm is weakening some as it heads toward the northeast, it was expected to cause a devastating storm surge in low-lying Bangladesh, where 2.5 million people were evacuated, says CNN. 

All those evacuations and all that preparedness in advance of the cyclone doubtlessly saved a lot of lives.

Cyclone Fadi follows two cyclones that headed west this spring and slammed into Africa, causing humanitarian crises in Mozambique and surrounding nations.

Earlier this week, Cyclone Kenneth slammed into northern Mozambique, killing more than 40 people - and that toll is certain to rise. This was also a Category 4 storm. On the island of Ibo, pretty much all the homes were destroyed, or at the very least lost their roofs. Humanitarian workers say not nearly enough aid is coming in to help.

Crops are also destroyed, so the region will need food aid for some time to come.

Near-complete devastation from Cyclone Kenneth in
Mozambique. Photo by Tsvangirai Mukwazhi/AP

This was the first cyclone to hit northern Mozambique in modern times, so this one is pretty much beyond the pale.

Even before this crisis, southern and central Mozambique and surrounding nations were staggered by Cyclone Idai, which has killed more than 600 people.

That two powerful cyclones would hit Mozambique within six weeks is unprecedented. Some blame climate change.

Water in the Indian Ocean is trending warmer over the years and recent decades. The warmer the water, the more fuel for cyclones. That increases the chances they could form, and increases the chances that any cyclones that do form become stronger than they otherwise would be.

It's not proven, of course, that climate change has created all these cyclones in the Indian Ocean this year, but the situation is suspicious. I'm sure climate scientists will be looking more intensely at the Indian Ocean after this episode.

Back in India, Cyclone Fani made landfall during the day, allowing for some dramatic video footage.

Here's a compilation from Voice of America:



Video, apparently taken from a high rise, of metal roofs being torn from buildings, the weakened walls collapsing:



Here, the winds from the cyclone knock over a large construction crane on a high rise, crushing smaller buildings beneath. I hope nobody was in the smaller structures!

Another Extreme Flood: This Time In India

At least 350 have died in the worst flooding parts of southern
India have seen in a century

It's all been heat waves and extreme floods this summer, and the latest place to have a mega-disaster is the state of Kerala, in southwestern India.

They often have some flooding due to seasonal monsoons, but this was the worst in at least a century. 

About 350 people have died, mostly in landslides, and at least 750,000 people have been evacuated.

The rain is finally tapering off after two weeks of downpours, but the damage is done. Many people are still stranded, and authorities are struggling to bring in relief supplies. The flood has given us some stunning and scary images, like in the videos below.

Here's a view from a window as a nearby building collapsed into a raging river:




Here, a man, neck deep in water inside his home, appeals for help while holding his cell phone just above the water:



Would you drive across this bridge, especially in these circumstances? This guy did. Yikes!




Finally, check out these  horrible landslides:

Flooding Caused Havoc In Many Areas Over The Weekend

It seemed like the theme in weather news the past several days has shifted a bit from heat to flood.

Severe flooding striking India in recent days. 

Sure, heat waves are going on at a brisk pace, if I dare use the word "brisk." Here in Vermont, Burlington on Sunday had its 25th consecutive day of 80 degree weather, which ties the record for the longest such spell.

It's likely to reach 80 degrees in Burlington today.

It got cloudy in Vermont Sunday, sort of a side effect of that aforementioned flooding. Those were the outer clouds of storms that caused flooding in parts of southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic states Sunday.

I'll get to that in a moment, but I should lead with flooding that was worse and deadlier than anything that happened in the United States.

Monsoon flooding happens most years in India, but at least in one section of that nation, the flooding in recent days was described as "unprecedented."

At least 37 people died and about 40,000 people were evacuated from the tourist area called the Malabar Coast, reports CNN.

Elsewhere, severe flooding also hit the Philippines. One viral video shows a wedding NOT canceled in a flooded church as the bride and her family waded through the murky water to the alter. The show must go on.

In Texas, eight or nine inches of rain fell in just three hours west of San Antonio. More than two dozen people had to be rescued via helicopter. No serious injuries were reported.

Mud on this car shows how high the water got in Little Falls, New Jersey.
Photo by Amy Newman. 

In Massachusetts, a torrential storm flooded some areas.

The hardest hit area was around Lynn, where a thunderstorm stalled Sunday, dumping eight inches of rain on that community. Many if not most streets in Lynn were closed by high water and many homes flooded.

In New Jersey, where yesterday I showed you that viral video of cars floating down a river, flood damage in some areas was the worst since Hurricane Floyd in 1999, says NorthJersey.com

The inside of some houses in Little Falls were flooded to a depth of up to four feet. In Bogota, New Jersey, a bride in her wedding dress and the groom were rescued from a flooded car. Seems like the flooding liked to attack weddings. I see a theme going on in this report.

The flooding goes on. Flash flooding was ongoing this morning in eastern Pennsylvania and, again, New Jersey. The heavy rain is expected to go on all day, and the flooding will become more widespread.

Here in Vermont, it looks like there will be increasing areas of rain as we get into Tuesday and Tuesday night. Some of the rain might be heavy in some spots in the Green Mountain State, but no widespread flooding is in the forecast.

Epic Heat Disaster In India Is Killing Thousands

A woman in India gets relief from a fan
during that country's current record
breaking heat wave  

Heat waves lack the dramatic optics of disasters such as tornadoes, floods and hurricanes, but they can often be among the worlds deadliest calamities.

Such is the case now in India and surrounding nations as a relentless heat wave grinds on. It's not known exactly how many people have died so far, but the number has to be in the thousands at least.

Last year, 2,400 or so people died in heat waves across India. This year, the heat is worse.

We know at least 340 people have died of the heat around New Delhi, and hospitals are overwhelmed with people suffering from heat-related injuries and illnesses.

It's amazing that a disaster has killed perhaps thousands of people and it's not in the top headlines of news organizations.

Then again, as I said, heat waves lack optics, and the deaths are not dramatic looking. Just tragic.

Heat waves are the neutron bomb of weather disasters: All the houses and buildings remain intact, but a lot of people die.

We do know this heat wave in India is one for the record books. The nation last week recorded its hottest temperature on record, with a reading of 124 degrees.

As almost all of us know from experience,  heat waves feel worse, are more draining and are more dangerous when the humidity is high.

The dew point temperature is a good way to measure how humidity feels. The dew point is the always the same or lower than the actual temperature and is the level at which moisture in the atmosphere would condense into fog or precipitation.

To most Americans, it begins to feel a bit humid when the dew point gets to around 60. It feels pretty damn oppressive when the dew point is 70.

In parts of India, dew points have been approaching or even exceeding an incredible 90 degrees. This is near the limit of what humans can survive, even if they're not exerting themselves and getting enough water.

As we all well know, many Indians have no access to electricity, never mind air conditioning, so this is clearly a dangerous situation.

Not all the deaths in India are due to the heat. The scorching weather is accompanied by a huge drought. Some farmers are committing suicide on their parched lands rather than give up and be forced to live in urban shantytowns.

Even for those who do have access to cooling - and jobs -  things are weird. In one city, people trying to cross streets find themselves stuck to the melting asphalt. Yes, melting asphalt.

Of course there have always been heat waves and people have always died during them. But as the planet warms, some hot spells are getting longer and more intense than they have in the past, which spells trouble.

Especially when they hit in areas that don't always have hot weather, like India

Heat waves like this one have killed lots of people in various parts of the world. An unprecedented European heat wave in 2003 killed an estimated 20,000 people. 

In 2010 as many as 50,000 people died from heat stress and respiratory illnesses during an never-before seen Russian heat wave.

Heat waves are usually more likely to kill ill and elderly people, which I think is another reason why these disasters don't attract headlines.

However, the public ought to be protected, and know what to do to protect themselves during intense heat waves, just as there are rules to protect ourselves from tornadoes, hurricanes and floods.

It's a cliche, but it's true: The life you save might be your own.

Epic Flooding Kills Close To 300 In India; Largely A Man Made Disaster

Indian soldiers rescue a man from floodwaters in
Chennai, India. Photo by R. Snethi Kumar/AP 

A lot of you may never have heard of Chennai, India, but it's the nation's fourth largest city, a tech hub, and now a disaster zone because of incredible rains and flooding.

Extreme flooding there this week has killed at least 270 people, cut off millions from basic services and inundated most of the city, including the airport.

November was Chennai's wettest month on record, wit 47 inches of rain, and another 11 inches opened the month of December, triggering the flooding. Eleven inches in one day is more than the city usually gets in the entire month of December.

Flooding is common around Chennai, but this was by far the worst. Meterologists say a combination of a strong northeast monsoon, caused by the record strong El Nino, combined with record warm temperatures in the Indian Ocean waters, helped trigger the flooding. 

Warm ocean water creates more evaporation into the atmosphere, potentially triggering heavier rain than would otherwise occur. Many scientists say climate change is contributing to warmer ocean waters in many parts of the world.

I can't with a straight face blame global warming for the Chennai floods, but it's possible it was one of many contributors. Probably not the main contributor, though.

It's difficult if not impossible to say what role, if any, climate change has on a particular weather event. I can only say global warming increases the liklihood of extreme precipitation in many parts of the world.

People stuck on or near an overpass in flooded Chennai,
India. Photo by STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images.

That's not to say the flooding wasn't man-made. The Los Angeles Times says Chennai's network of lakes, rivers, canals, swamps and marshlands that used to absorb rainwater or diverted it into the ocean has been replaced by housing, businesses, malls, parking lots and other development. So the torrential rains couldn't soak into the wetlands, and instead poured through populated areas.

A similar flood in Mumbai in 2005, which killed about 1,000 people, was also blamed on overdevelopment that destroyed wetlands and replaced them with concrete. Again, rainwater could not be absorbed as a result.

Water has receded over the past day in Chennai, but forecasters warn of more downpours there over the next few days.

India Heat Is Worst Weather Disaster Of The Year

Melting pavement during the intense heat
wave underway in India.  

Although it is getting some increasing media coverage in recent days, you could still be forgiven for not even hearing about an epic weather disaster unfolding this week.

No, it's not the Texas floods, though those are incredible, with billions in damage and at least 19 deaths.

Yes, tornadoes have been spinning up across parts of the Plains and Midwest, but that's not what I'm talking about, either.

The enormous weather disaster now unfolding is a terrible heat wave in India and Pakistan. So far, at least 1,000 people have died, and the unrelenting heat will certainly kill more people this week.

The Hindustan Times put it most graphically, as temperatures soared to 48 degrees Celcius, or about 118 degrees Fahrenheit:

"Humans 'boil in their own skin' at 48 degrees Celcius, the maximum temperaure record at Khamman in Telangana, which has become the focal point of a blistering heat wave sweeping through swaths of India."

True, other parts of the world, like Arizona and Saudi Arabia, get that hot and people do just fine. But they can retreat to air conditioned buildings in Phoenix and Riyadh. Not so in much of India, especially the poor and homeless, who must sit out there in that horrible heat. It's more humid, too, than in the deserts, so it makes it worse.

A disaster that kills more than a 1,000 people, with a spiraling death toll continuing, is usually big news. But every picture tells a story. More so than the printed word.

Heat waves are not telegenic. We are in awe of flash floods sweeping away buildings or tornadoes lifting whole houses into the sky. But a heat wave just bakes the populace quietly, with no fireworks.

The only dramatic photos we get are of pavement melting under the relentless Indian sun.

Heat waves are often the world's biggest weather killer, During a summer long heat wave in Europe back in 2003, 70,000 people, mostly elderly and ill people, died in the torrid conditions.

An extreme Russian heat wave in 2010 killed 11,000 people in just Moscow.

With climate change, bigger, more intense and longer heat waves are becoming more likely, so ore fatal heat waves seem to be a good bet

In India, the heat is forecast to continue for days. This disaster is only going to get worse.

Video: Really Bizarre Little Tornado In India

What appears to be a very skinny weird "landspout"
tornado in India.  

A video turned up on YouTube that showed what appears to be a strange little tornado in India.

It takes the form of a little cylinder, about as big in circumference as a person.

It could be just a dust devil, but judging from the clouds overhead, I really do think it's a small tornado. The headline on the video calls it a landspout, and that's probably a fair description.

A landspout is indeed a tornado, but they form differently, and usually look different from the funnel or wedge-shaped tornadoes that you commonly see in storm videos.

Unlike a typical tornado, which lowers from the base of a storm until it reaches the ground, a landspout usually starts to form near the earth's surface, or a few hundred feet up, then extends upward toward the thunderstorm clouds.

Landspouts usually get going when shifting winds merge near a developing thunderstorms. When the boundaries of shifting winds collide, sometimes they start to swirl.  If the swirl is under the thunderstorm, it could eventually make a connection with the clouds overhead.

At that point, a landspout tornado is borne.

Landspouts are usually weaker than tornadoes that form from supercell thunderstorms, the ones that form in the clouds and then extend toward the surface.

But anyway, here's the video. It is a strange one:

Indian Cyclone Leads To Deadly Blizzard, Avalanches

Rescuers carrying a body off of a high
Himalaya pass after a blizzard started
by the remnants of Cyclone Hudhud.  

Tropical systems like hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones almost always weaken and fall apart rapidly once they come ashore.  

Still, the remnants of these systems can cause torrential rains and severe flooding days after breaking apart as deep moisture from these systems travel hundreds or even thousands of miles inland.

This just happened in India but with a twist: When the moisture from the remnants of Cyclone Hudhud hit the Himalayas, they unleashed a huge blizzard that has killed 27 people and left many more missing. 

According to the New York Times, the extreme snowstorm caught about 350 trekkers in a high mountain pass. Only 244 reached their destination which means close to 100 have been killed or missing.  

Snow from Hurricane Sandy, 2012, W. Virginia.  

Some of those missing people could be hold up in high mountain lodges, however.

There were a lot of people hiking up in these mountain passes because October is usually the prime trekking season. It's the driest time of year, temperatures are usually on the moderate side, and it doesn't usually snow.

But the remnants of Hudhud changed all that, tragically.

Here in the United States there have been a few other examples of "snow hurricanes," though none were as tragic as the one last week in the Himalayas.

In 1804, the famous "snow hurricane" hit New England when a strong hurricane moving northward from the Carolina coast collided with cold air over New England.

Up to 48 inches of snow fell in the Windsor, Vermont area. The storm destroyed crops and orchards, flattened barns and killed 16 people. In northern New England, snow remained on the ground until spring.

Hurricane Ginny dumped several inches of snow on Maine in 1963. And horrible hurricane Sandy in 2012 dumped up to four feet of snow on West Virginia.

Yes, tropical storms and hurricanes are creatures of hot air and humidity. But sometimes, they team up with winter for truly terrible results.

Vongfong and Hudhud: Two Storms With Odd Names Are Serious, Dangerous

Big surf in Okinawa from Typhoon Vongfong. 

To Westerners, English speakers, the names Vongfong and Hudhud may seem like a curiosity, and perhaps something that you don't need to take so seriously

But Vongfong and Hudhud are killers. Vongfong is a typhoon lashing Japan at the moment, and Hudhud is a cyclone from the Bay of Bengal that is thrashing part of India.

See the videos at the bottom of this post. 

Typhoons and cyclones are just other names for hurricanes. Hurricanes are called typhoons in the western Pacific, and hurricanes are called cyclones near India. In any case, the storms can be dangerous, and these two are.

So far, six people are known dead from Cyclone Hudhud, but the storm was still moving ashore with winds of up to 127 mph and a dangerous storm surge, so we might get updates with higher death counts, unfortunately.

The Indian government had evacuated tens of thousands of people from low lying areas and put them in sturdy concrete buildings on high ground, so that will help. But there are still an unknown number of people in flimsy buildings, or in low lying areas prone to storm surges. 

In the city of Visakhapatnam, which is near where the cyclone is making landfall, a local journalist told the BBC the wind was picking up debris and smashing things throughout the city.

Meanwhile, in Japan, Typhoon Vongfong, with winds of at least 110 mph, has injured at least 35 people on Okinawa. 

On Okinawa, winds of tropical storm force, 39 mph or greater, continued almost continuously for 13 hours and up to 20 inches of rain fell.

At least Vongfong is no longer a super typhoon like it was a few days ago out in the open waters of the western Pacific. Back then, it had winds of 150 mph.

Mainland Japan probably won't get much in the way of hurricane force winds as Vongfong continues to weaken. But it won't be moving forward that fast, so it will have time to drop a lot of rain on already soaked Japan. 

The long period of downpours from Vongfong, together with the soaking Japan got from another typhoon last week, are almost sure to cause destructive flooding. 

Closer to the United States, the Atlantic Ocean has had a quiet hurricane season, but things heated up this weekend. Tropical Storm Fay formed Friday, and early this morning caused winds to gust as high as 82 mph on Bermuda.

Fay will turn toward the northeast and weaken, and will pose no further threat to land. But it looks like another tropical storm wants to form out in the Atlantic and threaten Puerto Rico and Hispaniola later in the week.

Here's a couple videos:

This one is reportedly a view of Visakhapatnam, India amid Hudhud:

Storm chaser James Reynolds captured this footage of Vongfong in Okinawa:

Is This One Of The First Climate Change Inspired Crime Wave?

Drought in India, possibly caused by climate change,
is inspiring new crimes by bandits.  

Last month, in drought-stricken northern India, bandits threatened to kill hundreds of villagers unless they delivered 35 buckets of water a day to them, according to the Associated Press.    

This might be among the first cases of criminals taking advantage of climate change to conduct their misdeeds.

Yes, yes, I know some activists would say some oil companies, frackers, climate change denialists and the like are criminals, but I'm not going to go there. That's a discussion for another day.

But with weather patterns changing, likely at least in part due to global warming, the monsoon in northern India isn't working as well as it should. It's way too dry up there.

Bandits lurk in hard to reach, remote places in northern India, and the criminals take advantage of their hiding places to terrorize and torture these villagers.

According to the July 21 Associated Press article:

"Since the threats were delivered last week, 28 villages have been obeying the oerder, taking turns handing over what the bandits are calling a daily 'water tax' police said.

'Water itself is very scarce in the region. Villagers can hardly meet their demand,' officer Suresh Kumar Singh said by telephone from Banda, a city on the southern border of central Uttar Pradesh state and caught within what is known in India as bandit country"

Police do see an opportunity in the drought, too. If the bandits don't get enough water from the villagers, or the supply line between villagers and the bandits are exposed, they might have to venture out to more exposed areas, where they could be caught, according to the AP article.

Wild Conspiracy Theory Of Week: El Nino Predictions To Screw India Economy?

A lot of climate forecasters are saying that a strong El Nino might be brewing in the eastern Pacific Ocean.  

No, predictions of an impending El Nino are
not an effort to screw over India, despitew
what the head of that country's meteorological office says.  

An El Nino is an area of warm water that develops off of South America, and can have worldwide effects on the weather and climate.

It can boost global temperatures and cause severe storms on some areas of the planet, along with drought in places like Indonesia, Australia and India.

The forecast of an El Nino is still uncertain, but more and more signs are developing that this could be a strong one, like the El Nino of 1998 that caused all kinds of weather disasters around the world.

Some people in India aren't buying this El Nino prediction. The India Meterological Department, says the prediction is bogus and is a plot by rich investors to get richer at the expense of India, according to the Economic Times. 

"'It is in the U.S. and Australian interests that agri commodities and stock market in India come down. They are spreading rumors. People will start hoarding and might start creating artificial scarcity of commodities. Don't heed their advice,'  said Laxman Singh Rathore, director general, IMD" 

Of course, that conspiracy theory is ridiculous, since many of the meteorlogists and climatologists making the El Nino predictions work for private firms and don't have a stake in international commodity prices.

And I don't think these scientists are conspiring among themselves to get bought off by commodities traders. Jeesh!

So we'll see if the El Nino starts later this year and whether that would cause agricultural problems in India.

And yes, not all commodities traders are wonderful people, but let's face it. Not every climate and weather event is a conspiracy.

Cyclone Phailin A Dire Threat To India

As if there wasn't enough bad news out there, a tremendous cyclone is about to hit India, and it seems mass casualties and incredible damage is inevitable.

Cyclone Phailin on Friday preparing to inflict
mass casualties and damage on India. 

A cyclone is the name for a hurricane in the Bay of  Bengal.  Cyclone Phailin, as it's called, is equivalent to a Catagory 5 Hurricane.

Phailin is packing winds of 160 mph and promises to bring a 20 foot high storm surge to the northeastern Indian coast.  By the way, a TON of people live there and are in harm's way.

So, if you want to get even more depressed about world events, watch as Phailin comes ashore within the next 24 hours.  It'll be the worst cyclone to hit India since at least 1999.

The only bright side, if you will, is the area Phailin is going to hit isn't as low lying as the area hit in 1999. So maybe a slightly smaller area will be flooded by the sea than in 1999. That's not saying much, though.

So, unfortunately, unless there is some sort of miracle, you will be reading about death and destruction in India on the news this weekend.