The very mild start to winter across the UK and the rest of Europe has been mirrored on the other side of the Atlantic. Much of northern and eastern US, along with parts of Canada, have had temperatures of around 10-15C – above average for this time of year.
Last weekend was particularly warm, with dozens of date-temperature records broken. Further south in the US an active storm system in east Texas spawned an outbreak of tornadoes last Saturday, damaging more than 50 homes and derailing a train.
Meanwhile, a powerful typhoon this week crossed the central Philippines bringing damaging winds and torrential rain. Typhoon Melor, called Nona in the Philippines, made landfall Monday after rapidly intensifying in strength. This slow moving typhoon weakened, then re-intensified again before passing just to the south of Manila, and lingering close to south-west Luzon on Wednesday.
The typhoon led to maximum sustained winds of about 145mph at its peak, but the strongest winds affected only a comparatively small area. Heavy rainfall was more widespread, and due to the typhoon’s rather slow forward speed, much rain occurred even as the storm weakened, with more than 300mm of rainfall in places. Power supply was cut to large areas of the central Philippines and almost 800,000 people were evacuated from the storm’s path.
Parts of New Zealand’s South Island were hit by severe summer thunderstorms on Sunday. Tornadoes caused damage to crops, and Christchurch got a large amount of hail along with torrential rain and flooding in places.