Parts of Mexico’s west coast were affected by Hurricane Flossie this week. The storm initially developed in the eastern Pacific to the south of Mexico on Sunday 29 June and then travelled north-west, parallel to the coast. Fuelled by warm sea surface temperatures of 29-30C, Flossie quickly strengthened to a category 3 hurricane on Tuesday, with winds reaching 115mph at peak intensity.
Though Flossie did not make landfall, the eye of the hurricane passed within 200 miles of the Mexican coast, with the outer bands of the storm delivering significant rainfall to the states of Guerrero, Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco. Flooding was reported in coastal regions, particularly in southernmost parts of Michoacán, where a major highway in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas was covered in nearly half a metre of flood water, and a sewer collapsed in a nearby residential area. Sea conditions were also a major concern and authorities warned of large swells and rip currents, advising people to avoid beaches and closing some ports to smaller vessels.
Flossie degraded almost as quickly as it had strengthened, weakening to tropical storm status by Thursday, and is now tracking more westerly as it veers away from Baja California.
Meanwhile, parts of Europe continued to swelter in the ongoing heatwave this week, with the final days of June breaking multiple maximum temperature records around Europe for the month.
On Thursday 26 June three cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina recorded new June maximums, with 38.8C in Sarajevo, 38.2C in Doboj, and 37.7C in Tuzla. On the same day, the Austrian state of Carinthia reached a new maximum of 38.3C, and Bologna provisionally set a record for the highest overnight minimum temperature in June, at 27.3C.
Two national June records fell in the following days: on Saturday Spain recorded 46C in the south-west town of El Granado, while Portugal followed suit on Sunday, beating the previous record by almost 2C when 46.6C was recorded in the town of Mora. This was also Portugal’s fifth-highest temperature ever recorded.
In the Alps, a different kind of June record was broken. On Saturday the freezing point – the altitude at which the temperature is 0C – rose to 5,233m. This was a significant record, marking the first June instance of the freezing point rising above the Alps entirely. The highest point in the range – the summit of Mont Blanc at 4,807m – even remained above freezing overnight.
