From Vietnam to Sardinia Rare, Extreme Weather Dislocates Thousands

Vietnam:  A storm named Podul follows Typhoon Haiyan through Vietnam.  While Haiyan did little damage outside the Philippines, Podul is saturating south central Vietnam, leading the the release of reservoir holdings to protect the dams, and thus, more flooding.

Flooding in Vietnam has killed at least 28 people since Friday, with nine others missing and nearly 80,000 displaced, state media and government reports said, after a tropical depression brought heavy rains across central areas of the country.

In Quang Ngai province, where nine people were killed and four were missing, floodwaters rose above a previous peak measured in 1999, submerging many houses, the official Thanh Nien newspaper reported. … Around 100,000 houses were submerged and nearly 80,000 people… The Guardian

Sardinia:

Slow-moving and powerful Extratropical Storm Cleopatra (called Ruven by the Free University of Berlin) dumped prodigious rains over the Mediterranean island of Sardinia on Monday, triggering floods that have killed at least eighteen people. … Monday’s deluge was … the 3rd greatest 24-hour rainfall event for Sardinia…

The rain was generated by a slow-moving low over the warm Mediterranean, kept in place (blocked) by ridge of high pressure.  Though the latest IPCC report says that ‘ trends in blocking intensity and persistence remain uncertain,” it seems to Jeff Masters and other observers that the world has had more than its fair share in recent years, including that which triggered the catastrophic flooding in Germany and Austria in June, 2013.

…extreme summertime jet stream patterns had become twice as common during 2001 – 2012 compared to the previous 22 years. One of these extreme patterns occurred in August 2002, during Central Europe’s last 1-in-100 to 1-in-500 year flood. When the jet stream goes into one of these extreme configurations, it freezes in its tracks for weeks, resulting in an extended period of extreme heat or flooding, depending upon where the high-amplitude part of the jet stream lies. The scientists found that because human-caused global warming is causing the Arctic to heat up more than twice as rapidly as the rest of the planet, a unique resonance pattern capable of causing this behavior was resulting.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, central Illinois was blasted by some 85 separately reported tornadoes on Sunday.  Eight are reported dead.

The grand total of 572 severe weather reports (filtered to remove duplicates) for the day were the most of any day of 2013, surpassing the 538 total reports from June 13. The 85 preliminary tornado reports is also the highest for any day of 2013, surpassing the 62 reports from January 29.

 The movement out of holding shares in big coal cannot happen fast enough.