Torrential rain and coastal flooding battered Mindanao in the southern Philippines alongside high spring tides on Monday. Double the island’s monthly average rainfall fell in less than 24 hours. The resultant flooding left seven people dead, forced nearly 7,000 people to evacuate their homes, and led to a devastating landslide in the city of Cayagon de Oro, in the Misamis Oriental province of northern Mindanao. A 14-year-old boy was killed, while others were left wading neck-deep in water.
Meanwhile, in far colder climes, Oklahoma was coated beneath crippling ice, as two bouts of freezing rain claimed the lives of six people this week in perilous travel conditions. Freezing rain is a phenomenon produced when a layer of warm air aloft lifts air temperatures above freezing, melting falling snow into rain, before it reaches a shallow layer near the ground where air temperatures are well below freezing; as the rain makes contact with surfaces, it freezes instantly, forming a widespread glaze of ice. Walking becomes difficult, while roads become lethal as the rain washes away any salt.
Elsewhere, hurricane-force bora winds pummelled through Italy and the Balkan peninsula over the past few days. A bora wind is the term for strong katabatic winds, downslope of mountainous terrain, along the Adriatic coast. These gusty winds typically feed in dry, cold air from the north-east between November and March, but pick up a lot of moisture as they cross the relatively mild sea. This week, they have been responsible for bitterly cold weather and heavy snow across southern Albania, Bulgaria and the Apennine mountains in Italy.
