Floods pour misery on many

A woman waits for help in her flooded home in the Mexican state of Oaxaca  [Reuters]

The week has begun with many locations around the world seeing further devastating floods.

Typhoon Ma-On is making its way toward Japan with outer feeder bands already bringing heavy rains to Kyushu, Shikoku and southern Honshu. Accumulation amounts for the southern coasts could exceed 400mm over the next few days, which will certainly cause flooding.

In India, monsoonal rains have been especially heavy recently. For a picnicking family in Madhya Pradesh there was hardly any warning as flash floods turned deadly. A normally trickling stream swelled within seconds and swept the family members away.
 
Other parts of India has also seen excessive rains. Heavy downpours in the remote northeastern state of Assam have caused the Brahmaputra River to overflow its banks and submerge numerous villages, affecting more than 150,000 people. The annual southwest monsoon will continue to bring floods across India until it withdraws in September.

Southern Mexico too has been swamped with rain. On Monday intense showers continued to fall causing more severe flooding. In two separate incidents mudslides buried houses leaving five dead.  Local authorities are recommending that the federal government declare a state of emergency in several parts of the region. Just to the south in the Pacific, the tropics are being watched carefully for the potential development of our next weather system. Up to an additional 120mm of rain could fall across the region in the next several days, causing yet more flooding.