31st July - Today's News: Worst Pakistan Floods for 80 Years; Hundreds Dead

Floods caused by monsoon rains kill more than 400 people in Pakistan - the flooding is reckoned to be the worst since 1929 and the current death toll is at least 430 and likely to rise. It's interesting to note the wide scale deforestation is being blamed for making the situation much worse than it might otherwise have been
"On average, 27,000 hectares of forest are cut down in Pakistan every year and heavy deforestation is responsible for massive flooding and landslides in the North-West Frontier Province," Environment Minister Hamid Ullah Afridi said
(Source: Gulf News)

And a slideshow of images from the BBC as Pakistan grapples with worst floods in living memory

'Way out of whack' weather produces record hailstone - and there's me just dreaming of one day seeing marble sized hail! It's been declared the largest by weight and diameter but not by circumference.

Jersey wants BBC to put it on the weather map - the problem being that the Met Office only provides a forecast for the UK, and the Channel Islands are not part of the UK .... And, indeed, why should the BBC in their ever diminishing weather forecast time slots (well you have to make time for Depressedenders adverts somehow) devote more time to the Channel Island than, say, the Shetlands? Which also never get a mention but definitely are part of the UK!

In the USA the South bakes, humidity feels like 100-plus degrees

Two thousand troops fight forest fires in Russia heatwave

New research reveals that reforestation projects capture more carbon than industrial plantations - in other words, natural regeneration of rainforests, with a wide diversity of plant species, is much better than blanket monoculture aforestation.

New theory on why midcontinent faults cause earthquakes - good news for those on the New Madrid fault line, maybe not so good news for those on other 'quiet' faults ....

Taiwan records unusual typhoon-free July

Solar cycle may drive Venice's floods - which actually is more significant than it sounds
Peaks in solar activity cause the city to flood more often, apparently by changing the paths of storms over Europe.
It's long been suspected by some people that increased solar activity affects the development of low presure systems in the Atlantic - and basically leads to more wet & windy weather for Britain. This research lends support to that idea.

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