Temperature
Extremes
High
temperature extreme:
Karina, Sudan, +109 degrees.
Low temperature extreme:
Oimyakan, Siberia -58 degrees.
(top)
Deadly
European Tempests
Three
days of ongoing severe storms produced some of the worst weather
damage Northern Europe had experienced during the previous
century.
Scores of residents were killed in storm-related accidents that
stretched from Ireland to the Alps. High winds uprooted thousands
of old-growth trees and inflicted widespread damage to buildings
and power transmission lines in several countries. The storms
are likely to cost insurers well over $4 billion, making it the
most expensive catastrophe in the world this year, and possibly
Europe’s all-time worst insurance catastrophe. Six thousand troops
were deployed across France and the national electricity company
brought workers out of retirement as the country tapped all its
resources in a bid to clean up and restore power to millions of
homes before the millennium celebrations on New Year’s Eve.
(top)
Winter
Wildfires
Residents
of eastern Los Angeles County resorted to using garden
hoses to soak their roofs as a wildfire burned into the back yards
of their homes on the edge of the Angeles National Forest.
More than 700 acres of the steep slopes in the San Gabriel Mountains
burned as 1,000 firefighters worked to contain the blazes that
were sparked a few miles north of the city of Arcadia. Police
evacuated 260 homes in the threatened area, giving some residents
only five minutes to gather their belongings before leaving. The
cause of the fire was unknown, but ongoing dry and warm weather
contributed to the high fire danger.
(top)
Cyclone
Season
Tropical
cyclone Astride formed over the warming waters of the western
Indian Ocean then lost force before making landfall in northern
Madagascar late in the week.
Maximum sustained winds at the height of the storm briefly reached
90 mph, but were far from any land areas.
(top)
Argentine
Canine Hero
Argentina’s
state-run Telam news agency reported that a dog in the northwest
of the country saved his four-year-old master from a swarm of
bees by flinging itself over the boy’s body in an attempt to block
the attack.
Kharin Toloza was playing with his dog Chocolate near Valle Viejo
when he was attacked by the insects. The dog immediately jumped
on top of the boy and stayed there until the boy was taken to
a hospital after receiving only a few stings. While Kharin survived
the attack, the dog died as a result of the numerous stings sustained
while protecting the child.
(top)
Etna
Eruption
Inhabitants
of a town on the slopes of Mount Etna ran into the streets
in panic after the volcano shook violently.
The dispatch from Zafferana said no damage or injuries occurred
from the string of tremors, the largest of which reached magnitude
of 3.0.
(top)
Southeast
Asian Chill
Icy
winds blowing into the subtropical regions of Southeast Asia from
China were blamed for at least seven deaths in Thailand and
Burma.
The
mercury dropped to 28 degrees Fahrenheit at the top of Doi Inthanon,
Thailand’s highest mountain peak located in the northern province
of Chiang Mai. Temperatures plunged to about 37 degrees in Burma’s
capital Yangon (Rangoon), better known for its hot and humid climate.
(top)
Earthquakes
Central
and southern parts of Mexico were jolted by a magnitude
5.9 earthquake that broke windows and caused high-rise buildings
in Mexico City to sway.
Earth
movements were also felt in Vancouver Island, Maine,
the Dominican Republic, Switzerland, western Greece,
northern Egypt, New Zealand’s South Island, Indonesia’s
Irian Jaya province, Taiwan, eastern and southern Japan
and the Solomon Islands.
(top)
Southern
Whale Drama
A
baby whale returned to its stranded mother on a rocky Argentine
beach and worked along with 40 human volunteers to prod her back
into the icy South Atlantic Ocean.
The two Southern Right whales had become trapped by an outgoing
tide in a bay on the Patagonian shores. The fishermen used buckets
to keep the whales’ skin wet, and were soon joined by more volunteers.
With the next high tide, the calf was able to swim out into the
ocean, but it soon returned to its mother’s side. Adrian Contreras
of the Patagonia Nature Foundation reported that the baby whale
continually prodded its mother with its head and bumped her with
its tail trying to awaken her.
Contreras
said, “It was pushing the mother, telling it something like ‘come
on, don't stay behind.’ ”
Both
mother and calf were finally able to swim back into the ocean
with only minor bruises.
