6th Nuclear Test by France
Jan 27th, 1996
Extreme Weather report - Compiled by
"The Censored Candidate"
HONOLULU, Hawaii, Feb 2-1996 (Reuter) - Scientists kept a close eye on Kilauea volcano on Friday
after it showed signs of erupting for the first time in nearly 14 years.
TOWER, Minn, Feb 2 (Reuter) -
The temperature sank to 60 below zero
in this northern Minnesota town on Friday,
"The coldest ever recorded in the state"
The previous record of 59 below (minus 50.5 C) had stood since 1899.
CHICAGO, Feb 3 (Reuter) -
Brutal arctic weather swept across most of the United States on Saturday,
leaving
3/4rds of the country shivering in sub-zero temperatures
as the death toll mounted due to the cold snap.
In Chicago at least seven people have died in the past few days in fires
while
trying to keep warm.
Television stations cautioned residents against such problems as eyelash freeze''
and warned that the killer cold could freeze jewelry to flesh.
Lexington, Ma February 4th (WSC)-
Record low temperatures were set in at least 19 states Saturday morning.
A select few of these include:
25 below at Rapid City, SD, 21 below at Laramie, WY, 31 below at Houghton Lake, MI,
36 below at La Crosse, WI (110 year record broken),
February 4 BEIJING (Reuter) -
A deadly earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale,
struck the mountainous southwestern region of Lijiang, China Saturday evening,
- injuring 15,000 several thousand seriously -
and leaving 300,000 residents homeless.
as rescue teams scour ruins of hundreds of thousands of houses for survivors,
The death toll is expected to top 300.
``The earth just shakes and shakes. When will it stop?''
More than 186,000 homes collapsed -- or 80 percent of the local total
February 4 CHARLOTTE, N.C.,(Reuter) - The bone-chilling cold ravaging much of the Midwest and
central areas, extended to the Carolinas on Sunday, leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity.
North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt declared the snow, sleet and freezing rain the worst natural disaster in
many years and asked President Clinton to declare a state of emergency.
February 4th, Lexington, MA (WSC)-
Forty inches of snow has fallen in Valdez since the snow began on Saturday
with as much as a foot and half falling Sunday night.
Until Saturday, Valdez had virtually no snow for the 1995-96 Winter Season.
As of Monday morning, Valdez had a total of 70 inches for the winter-
about 140 inches behind a normal winter at this time.
As much as three feet of additional snow can be expected during the next couple of days.
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February 5, TAMPA, Fla.,
(Reuter) - Bitterly cold Arctic weather that numbed the eastern two-thirds of the United States,
headed south to Florida on Monday, leaving
orange trees covered with ice and tourists shivering on beaches.
Temperatures fell below freezing in central Florida,
A record low of 19 degrees Fahrenheit was reported in Jacksonville,
and in Florida's northern Panhandle,
the wind chill took the mercury to -3 Degrees
in Panama City, forecasters said.
About one-half of the state's $1.2 billion citrus crop was still on the trees, Citrus fruit is damaged when temperatures fall below 28 degrees for more than four consecutive hours.
LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuter)
From Britain to Yugoslavia, Europe shivered under a thick blanket of snow on Tuesday
as freezing temperatures brought chaos to much of the continent.
Blizzards trapped over 1,000 drivers in their cars overnight in southern Scotland
and brought down power lines across Britain, l
eaving more than 25,000 homes without electricity.
Snow drifted up to six feet (two metres) deep in places
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Mount Washington hit with record wind chill amid | PBS NewsHou
Danish government icebreakers went into action for the first time in nearly a decade,
to clear channels between Jutland and the islands of Funen and Zealand,
where the capital Copenhagen is situated.
The Swedish capital Stockholm hit minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 fahrenheit). Police said more than a foot of snow fell in some places,
in what seemed to be the heaviest snowfalls in the region in a decade.
Rough seas, heavy snowfalls and blizzards
closed Romania's Black Sea port of Constanta and disrupted River Danube traffic.
The Vienna daily newspaper Neue Kronen Zeitung said council trucks had cleared more than 200,000 cubic metres from the streets -- 100 times more than during last year.
To the south, Portugal was experiencing one of its wettest winters in years.
MADRID, Feb 6 (Reuter)
Spaniards in the southern and central regions have spent the last five years
looking longingly at the sky
and praying for rain.
In just three hours last week, the park had 8.9 gallons of rain 10.76 square feet
more than half of the normal rainfall for the entire month.
LONDON, Feb 7 (Reuter) -
Half of Scotland's schools were closed by snow on Wednesday
and thousands of people in Britain were still without power after one of the
worst snowfalls in living memory.
February 8th, PORTLAND, Oregon,
(Reuter) - The worst flood in more than 30 years
wreaked havoc on heavily populated areas of western Oregon
on Thursday as raging rivers and mud slides forced
thousands of people to flee their homes.
A state of emergency was declared in 16 Oregon counties
and 13 Washington counties.
February 8, BORDEAUX, France,
(Reuter) - Two people were killed as high winds and heavy rain lashed France's Atlantic coast
causing widespread damage, officials said on Thursday.
Winds reached speed of 160 km an hour, (100 miles and hour) on Wednesday,
smashing boats, damaging roads and bridges, and bringing down power lines.
About 140,000 people in the Gironde and Dordogne regions near Bordeaux
were without power on Thursday morning.
February 8, BUCHAREST, (Reuter) -
Freezing temperatures and blizzards hit Romania on Thursday,
blocking rail traffic and disrupting shipping on the River Danube, meteorologists said.
February 10, 1996 Saturday,
- Heavy snow across Britain earlier in the week left thousands of residents without power for days and
closed major roads between southern Scotland and northern England.
February 10th PORTLAND, Ore
(Reuter) - The devastating flood that swept through the Pacific Northwest this week,
was only the latest in a series of weather disasters
that have made this winter one of the region's worst in recent memory.
The relentless rains that sent virtually every river in Washington and Oregon spilling over their banks,
followed an unusual spell of bitterly cold weather, that brought heavy snow and ice.
In December a storm that packed hurricane-force winds slammed into the region,
causing $240 million in damages and cutting off power to more than one million people.
This has been the winter from hell,'' Janet Kent, 47, told the Oregonian newspaper. ``I'm ready to move to Hawaii.'' Oregon state climatologist George Taylor said;
the flooding was the worst since the Christmas 1964 floods,
that affected a four-state region stretching from northern California to Idaho.
February 10, WASHINGTON
(Reuter) - President Clinton Friday declared
storm-battered Oregon and Washington as major disaster areas,
the White House announced.
Both states will be entitled to federal disaster relief to help them cope with
flooding caused by heavy rain and high winds that began
on Jan. 26 and resumed this week.
February 10, KIEV,(Reuter)
An sudden sub-zero plunge in temperatures knocked out power to
hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on Saturday; and heavy snow halted
traffic in other southern regions, officials said.
Arkady Demidenko, Crimea's Acting Prime Minister, said
it would take a week to restore power to all areas of the normally temperate Black Sea region.
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We have an emergency on our hands.
Up to a third of Crimean towns have no electricity and another 57 have partial power cuts,''
We haven't seen anything like this in 20 years.
Interfax Ukraine news agency said much of
southern Ukraine was hit by heavy snowfalls,
leaving hundreds of cars stranded on roads left impassable by snowdrifts.
February 11, JAKARTA, (Reuter) - Widespread floods in Indonesia's capital Jakarta killed at least six
people, and forced more than 4,000 to flee their homes in a weekend of air, road and rail chaos, the
official Antara news agency said on Sunday.
February 13, RIO DE JANEIRO, (Reuter) - At least 12 people were killed in Brazil by Mudslides and
overflowing rivers when heavy rains swept over Rio de Janeiro and surrounding regions on Tuesday,
authorities said. The rain, which began in the early morning hours, flooded main avenues and forced many drivers of both cars and buses to abandon their vehicles in rising waters.
TOKYO (Reuter) -
An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale jolted southern Japan's Ogasawara islands on Thursday morning, but no damage or casualties were reported.
February 14th, BOISE, Idaho (Reuter) - President Clinton toured three flood-ravaged states Wednesday, and announced $61 million in emergency aid for two of them, and said he would ask Congress to approve additional money for disaster relief. We don't have enough money in the treasury right now to meet all the demands'' for disaster relief, Clinton said, adding that ``we're going to have to go back to Congress and ask for a little help, and I'm sure it will be there.'' Storm damage throughout the nation has been unusually harsh this year.
Last year at this time, Clinton had issued only one disaster declaration. This year he has issued 27 such edicts,
which make funding available to assist victims.
Estimated flood damage in those two states and neighboring Idaho has been put at
$700 million and the total is expected to be much higher.
Ten of the 50 states are experiencing , or have recently
experienced flooding serious enough to require federal assistance:
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 15
(Reuter) - At least 58 people have died in three days of rains that lashed Rio de Janeiro this week.
In addition, a further 30 are still missing and thousands are homeless
after mudslides and floods destroyed houses and
brought chaos to the city and its surrounding areas.
But for many families this year's carnival will be a time of mourning
as they try to come to terms with the loss of family, friends and belongings after the
worst rains in 30 years poured down on the city.
Maria de Fatima is lucky -- her two-year-old son, Geovani, is alive but
only after Maria had a split second to choose between saving Geovani or Lucas, her 11-month baby. Grabbing on to Geovani, she could only watch as her baby son disappeared under a sea of mud. In the Rocinha slum,. In one shanty-town, more than a dozen people have been confirmed dead and up to six more are still missing when
250 tons of mud and stone thundered down on 16 makeshift shacks.
Robson de Aguiar Germinoia, a 22-year old painter, is now facing the future alone
after losing his mother, stepfather, four brothers and sisters, brother-in-law and his
11-month old son. .
Feb. 16 CHISINAU,-
The normally temperate Republic suffers one of its hardest winters in 40 years,
with temperatures as low as minus 13 Fahrenheit.
More than 40 children from an orphanage ended up in hospital earlier in the month with
severe frostbite caused by a lack of heating.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa., Feb 16
(Reuter)- The $10 million in emergency aid President Clinton promised was
on top of some $35 million already committed.
More than 100,000 Pennsylvanians were driven from
their homes during last month's floods,
52,000 dwellings were damaged and 100 people lost their lives
February 16, MAPUTO,
(Reuter) - Major rivers burst their banks after a week of torrential summer rains,
At least 13,000 people in the Pungue Valley in central Mozambique fled their homes this week to seek safety on the Beira-Zimbabwe road and railways.
Feb 17, JAKARTA,
(Reuter) - An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale hit Indonesia's remote
Irian Jaya province on Saturday.
The quake also caused tidal waves of two metres (6.6 feet).
This concludes the report of events in brief, since
January 27th, 1996.
"The Censored Candidate"
