At least 101 people have died after flash floods and landslides hit Indonesia and East Timor on Sunday. Torrential rain sparked widespread destruction in the South East Asian neighbours, with water from overflowing dams submerging thousands of homes. The affected area stretches from Flores island in eastern Indonesia to East Timor. In Indonesia alone, 80 people have died with dozens still missing. Officials warn the toll could still rise.
"The mud and the extreme weather have become a serious challenge and the debris piling up has hampered the search and rescue team," Indonesian Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesperson Raditya Djati told BBC reporters.
First fires, now flood and plagues from spiders, mice and locusts - it's been a terrible year for Australia's wildlife and livestock that are now trying to survive the rainfall pummelling New South Wales. Reports of spiders swarming by residents' homes to reach higher ground have spread on social media but animals are struggling across eastern Australia. In the worst flooding in decades, close to a metre of rain has fallen in some parts of New South Wales and more is forecast to come, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. From a farm in Kinchela Creek, one man posted an image of thousands of spiders running across a muddy field.
"All the brown you can see is spiders trying to beat the floodwater," Matt Lovenfosse wrote on Facebook, adding that he expected them to soon be inside his house. In Macksville, Melanie Williams watched as "thousands" of spiders scaled the fence of her back yard, she told ABC News
Yesterday the American government-run National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA) released their monthly national report on the American weather which covers last months coldest February in more than 30 years and the record-breaking freeze which caused many parts of the country, especially Texas, to become, "unlivable!"
It was a brutally cold month for Texans: February 2021 brought the coldest air since December 1989 to much of the state. Several locations across central Texas — including Austin and Waco — broke records for the longest streak of below-freezing temperatures. Every county in Texas was under a Winter Storm Warning in mid-February and experienced wind chill values below zero as far south as the Rio Grande River and northeastern Mexico. The Texan infrastructure was brought to its knees.
I read somewhere that to really understand something is to be liberated from it. Yet, how can we liberate ourselves from our vain attempt at global progress which is, in all intents and purposes, destroying the very place in which we live? Our world is collapsing, an implosion on a scale unimaginable just a few years ago. Without a doubt, if we continue on our current path we will lose our home and everything in it. Mankind’s environment is collapsing just as fast as its society. Planet Earth’s resources are dwindling at an alarming rate. Animals, plants, fossil fuels, minerals, water, air and soil are all diminishing at an unsustainable speed while the world’s population is increasing.
Many Texans also faced food shortages as grocery stores tried to stay stocked, huge crowds descended on food pantries, and the pandemic continued to threaten a state where, according to the latest NBC News data, nearly 43,000 people have died of Covid-19 and 2.6 million people have been infected. Some 24,000 people were without any running water Tuesday after the public water systems they rely on were rendered "nonoperational" by the unseasonably cold winter blast, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reported.
Authorities in Indonesia say the country has seen 185 disasters since the start of the year, including earthquakes, tornadoes, landslides and floods. According to the National Disaster Management Agency, BNPB, hydrometeorological disasters dominate the list, with 127 flood events and 30 landslides recorded in several regions of the country during the period 01 to 21 January 2021.
2020 will be remembered for the Covid-19 and the chaos it brought to a world not prepared for such a pandemic. However, and somewhat hidden because of Covid-19 and other major events Climate Change continued its relentless march in 2020 and causing the US alone, a record-busting 22 billion dollars in weather-related disasters in 2020.
5 Jan 2021
Bolivia's Tuni glacier is disappearing faster than initially anticipated, according to scientists in the Andean nation, a predicament that will likely make worse water shortages already plaguing the capital La Paz, just 60 km away. Scientists from the Universidad Mayor de San Andres (UMSA), who monitor the Tuni and other regional glaciers, told Reuters the once sprawling glacier had been reduced to just one square kilometre.
2 Jan 2021
Millions of tons of toxic particulates thrown into the atmosphere during the last 60 years
As 2020 disappears into the sunset, it closes the warmest decade (2011-2020) on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. 2020 remains on track to be one of the three warmest on record, and may even rival 2016 as the warmest on record. The six warmest years have all been since 2015 and that is a fact even the most robust sceptic cannot ignore.
The exceptional heat of 2020 is despite a cooling La Niña event, which is now mature and impacting weather patterns in many parts of the world.
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