Floods, Snow, Stupidity, More: Recent Wild Weather Videos

Aftermath of severe floods and mudslides in Brazil.
See video in this post. 

As I always say, pretty much everybody has a camera in their pocket, so we get all kinds of new perspectives on everything, including extreme weather.

As I do from time to time, I highlight some of these videos of wild weather going on in the world currently.  

The first one is part of a tragedy.  Massive floods and mudslides have hit parts of Brazil, killing at least 50 people. This video is very much reminiscent of the Ellicott City, Maryland flash flood videos of 2016 and 2018 in which people are trapped in a restaurant as a torrent sweeps cars and pretty much everything else away through the downtown.

This one is in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil:


Here's a flash flood hitting Narok, Kenya this past week. Would you cross this bridge in this weather?



St. John's Newfoundland has largely recovered from that massive blizzard earlier this month, but as you can imagine, there's still LOTS of snow on the ground.

Let's take a trip to the St. John's Costco, via this web cam video to pick up supplies. The middle segment of the video is something. Like driving at the bottom of a canyon:



The opposite end of Canada has gotten an oddly huge amount of snow, too.  Not nearly as much as Newfoundland, but for the Vancouver, Canada area, it's incredible. They've had about 14 inches of snow this month, compared to a normal of about four inches.

The snow there typically melts fast and doesn't stick around, but this time, it did. The next clip is from the famous Chilliwack, British Columbia security camera, which seems to catch an incredible number of odd happenings.

This clip is of all the people there who can't drive in the snow. And you thought it was bad here in Vermont! Watch:

Deadly Cyclone Disaster In Africa

Devastating Cyclone Idai as it was about to make landfall
in Mozambique late last week. 

In yesterday's post, I mentioned in passing a deadly cyclone in Africa, and it deserves a closer look today.

That's because, tragically it has become the deadliest weather event in the world so far in 2019. At last count, Tropical Cyclone Idai had killed 239 people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa. The toll could easily rise.

Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall last Thursday in Beira, Mozambique, on the east coast of Africa. With top sustained winds of 110 mph it was the fourth strongest tropical cyclone on record to hit Mozambique, according to Dr, Jeff Masters wrote the Category 6 weather and climate blog.

The BBC said there is widespread destruction in and around Beira, with massive flooding and roofs blown off many, many homes. In neighboring Zimbabwe, the storm triggered landslides, a couple of which slammed into boarding school dormitories, killing some students.

Like most hurricanes, water killed the most poeple when Idai hit. (A tropical cyclone in this part of the world is what we would call a hurricane if it hit the United States. They're both the same thing).

A storm surge blasted into the area around Beira, Mozambique, causing the most damage and deaths. Flooding from the storm caused widespread damage and misery in much of southeastern Africa.

Tropical Cyclones (hurricanes) do occasionally come off the Indian Ocean and hit eastern Africa, so you can't say this is a weird, previously unheard of tragedy caused by climate change. However, Tropical Cyclone Idai is one of the worst and deadliest such storms to hit Mozambique on record, said Masters in the Category 6 blog.

Here's a news video of the disaster. You might not understand the language, but you'll certainly get a sense of the destruction: