The storm began barreling into the region on Thursday, with the biggest effects expected to close major highways and trigger power outages Friday afternoon into Saturday. A blizzard warning through Sunday morning covers a 300-mile (482-kilometer) stretch from north of Lake Tahoe to south of Yosemite National Park.

“Your safe travel window is over in the Sierra,” the National Weather Service in Reno posted Thursday morning on social media. “Best to hunker down where you are.”

Meteorologists predict as much as 10 feet (3 meters) of snow is possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe by the weekend, with 3 to 6 feet (0.9 to 1.8 meters) in the communities on the lake’s shores and more than a foot (30 centimeters) possible in the valleys on the Sierra’s eastern front, including Reno.

Winds are expected to gust in excess of 115 mph (185 kph) over Sierra ridgetops, and 70 mph (113 kph) at lower elevations.

“This will be a legitimate blizzard,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said during an online briefing Thursday. “Really true blizzard conditions with multiple feet of snow and very strong winds, the potential for power outages and the fact that roads probably aren’t going to be cleared as quickly or as effectively as they normally would be even during a significant winter storm.”

Backcountry avalanche warnings were in place around Lake Tahoe, as well as areas around Yosemite National Park stretching down to Mammoth Lakes.

Alpine Meadows, an affiliate of neighboring Palisades Tahoe, will be closed Friday. Palisades planned to open only its lowest elevation runs, and could end up closing those.

Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist at UC-Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab, said it is possible they could break their modern-day record of about 3.5 feet (1 meter) of snow in a single day from back in 1989. The lab was founded atop the Sierra in 1946 in Soda Springs, California, northwest of Lake Tahoe.

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The California Highway Patrol imposed travel restrictions on a long stretch of Interstate 80 between Reno and Sacramento, requiring drivers to put chains on their tires. A stretch of the highway was closed for hours at midday Thursday while crews cleared the wreckage of a semi-trailer truck that overturned near Truckee, California.

On the bright side, California water officials said the storm should provide a much-needed shot in the arm to the Sierra snowpack, which is vital to the state’s water supplies and sits well below normal so far this season.

Palisades Tahoe ski resort wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the big dump expected over the weekend on top of 8 feet (2.4 meters) of snow in February should allow them to keep the slopes open through Memorial Day. But it warned blizzard conditions are likely to force temporary closures off and on through the weekend.

Todd Cummings decided to drive from Santa Cruz to the Lake Tahoe area ahead of the storm with plans to lay low during the blizzard and then hit the slopes.

“When a storm comes in, people have a tough time getting there, so there’s sometimes less crowds on the mountains and there is untracked, fresh snow that it’s super light and you float on it. It’s fantastic!” he said.

Some remained skeptical it will be as bad as predicted.

Richard Cunningham said he has heard before about forecasts for the storm of the century that didn’t materialize since he moved from Las Vegas to Reno in 1997.

“Same story, different day,” he said. “Sometimes it doesn’t even snow.”

That was before blue skies gave way to clouds and gusty winds that blew the roof off a shed east of Reno Thursday afternoon.

Howie Nave, a radio DJ and stand-up comedian in South Lake Tahoe, said some people may not have been taking the storm seriously earlier in the week because dire forecasts of potentially heavy storms have not materialized several times this winter.

“There were times when I was expecting a Saint Bernard, but you gave me a Chihuahua,” Nave said about the weather forecasters.

But “everybody’s talking about the storm up here,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had a blizzard warning.”

The Sierra Nevada snowpack stood at 80% of average to date but only 70% of the typical April 1 peak, California Department of Water resources officials said Thursday.

“The results today show just how critical this upcoming month is going to be in terms of our water supply outlook for the upcoming year,” hydrometeorologist Angelique Fabbiani-Leon said during a briefing at Phillips Station, a snowpack-measuring location south of Lake Tahoe.

___

Associated Press reporter John Antczak contributed to this report from Los Angeles. Rodriguez reported from San Francisco.

“This storm is predicted to be one of the largest and most significant in our county’s history and our goal is to get through it without any fatalities or any serious injuries,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters Saturday.

Evacuation warnings and orders were in effect for Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Ventura and Monterey counties. Classes were canceled Monday for schools across Santa Barbara County.

The storm, called a “Pineapple Express” because the atmospheric river’s plume of moisture stretches back across the Pacific to near Hawaii, arrived in Northern California on Saturday when most of the state was under some sort of wind, surf or flood watch.

By early Sunday, the National Weather Service issued a rare “hurricane force wind warning” for the Central Coast, with wind gusts up to 92 mph from the Monterey Peninsula to the northern section of San Luis Obispo County.

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The storm was expected to move down the coast and hit the Los Angeles area with downpours, flash floods and high-elevation mountain snow on Sunday and to hammer Orange County and San Diego on Monday. Heavy to moderate rain was expected to stay in Southern California until Tuesday.

The National Weather Service forecast up to 6 inches of rainfall across Southern California’s coastal and valley areas, with up to 12 inches likely in the foothills and mountains. Forecasters predicted mudslides, debris flows and flooding to occur.

It is the second time in days that California has been hit by an atmospheric river, a long band of moisture that forms over the Pacific. The first arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday, delivering downpours and heavy snowfall that brought cable car service to a halt before moving down the coast.

New York City — which only on Tuesday saw its first snow in more than two years — was in the headlights as the National Weather Service laid out warnings of a possible 3 to 5 inches (7.6 to 12.7 centimeters) of snow through Friday in the state and portions of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, an American Airlines plane slid off a snowy taxiway in Rochester, New York, after a flight from Philadelphia. No injuries were reported.

On the West Coast, Oregon’s governor declared a statewide emergency Thursday night after requests for aid from multiple counties “as they enter the sixth day of severe impacts” from weather marked by freezing rain.

Thousands of residents have been without power since Saturday in parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley after an ice storm caused extensive damage.

“We lost power on Saturday, and we were told yesterday that it would be over two weeks before it’s back on,” said Jamie Kenworthy, a real estate broker in Jasper in Lane County.

“We do have a generator that we got last year, and right now it’s running an oil plug-in heater,” she said. “We also have a natural gas stove, and I’ve been running two of the burners to try to help heat up the house.”

In the past two weeks, storms have blasted much of the U.S. with rain, snow, wind and frigid temperatures, snarling traffic and air travel and causing at least 45 deaths.

That included three people electrocuted Wednesday by a downed power line in Portland, Oregon. A man trying to get out of a parked car covered by the line died with a baby in his arms after slipping on the icy driveway and hitting the live wire. The baby survived.

His pregnant 21-year-old girlfriend and her 15-year-old brother died when they tried to help. Their father, Ronald Briggs, told KGW-TV that he helplessly watched their deaths.

“I have six kids. I lost two of them in one day,” he said.

Crews had made steady progress restoring power to tens of thousands of customers in Oregon after back-to-back storms, but by Thursday night more than 79,000 were without electricity, according to the website poweroutage.us.

Portland Public Schools canceled classes for the fourth straight day amid concerns about icy roads and water damage to buildings, and state offices in Portland were also ordered closed Friday.

Bitter weather continued in the South, where a new layer of ice formed over parts of Tennessee on Thursday — part of a broader bout of cold sweeping the country.

Authorities blamed at least 14 deaths in Tennessee on the system, which dumped more than 9 inches (22.8 centimeters) of snow since Sunday on parts of Nashville, a city that rarely see such accumulations. Temperatures also plunged below zero (minus 17.7 Celsius) in parts of the state, creating the largest power demand ever across the seven states served by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The dead included a box truck driver who slid into a tractor-trailer on an interstate, a man who fell through a skylight while cleaning a roof, and a woman who died of hypothermia after being found unresponsive in her home.

On Thursday, Will Compton of the nonprofit Open Table Nashville, which helps homeless people, stopped his SUV outside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to hand out warm hats, blankets, protein drinks and socks as icy rain fell.

“People who are poor and people who are homeless are getting hit the hardest,” Compton said.

Aaron Robison, 62, has been staying at one of the city’s warming centers and said the cold wouldn’t have bothered him when he was younger. But now with arthritis in his hip and having to rely on two canes, he needed to get out of the cold.

“Thank God for people helping people on the streets. That’s a blessing,” he said.

In Mississippi’s capital city, an estimated 12,000 customers were dealing with low water pressure Thursday, another setback for Jackson’s long-troubled water system.

Pipe breaks accelerated Wednesday when the frozen ground began to thaw and expand, putting pressure on buried pipes, Jackson water officials said. The water system experienced increased pressure due to a spike when people filled their bathtubs in response to what officials called a “deliberate misinformation campaign” on social media about the city’s water supply, Jackson water manager Ted Henifin said.

Since extreme cold weather set in last week, more than 60 oil spills and other environmental incidents have been reported in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields, where regulators say wind chills as low as minus 70 degrees (minus 56.6 C) have strained workers and equipment, making accidents more likely.

In Washington state, five people — most of them presumed homeless — died from exposure to cold in just four days last week in Seattle as temperatures plummeted to well below freezing, the medical examiner’s office said.

In Kansas, authorities were investigating the death of an 18-year-old whose body was found Wednesday in a ditch not far from where his vehicle had become stuck in snow.

___

Associated Press journalists Jonathan Mattise and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville and Adrian Sainz in Memphis contributed.

Destructive thunderstorms in North America and Europe and a series of devastating earthquakes last year cost the world around $250 billion in damages, according to a new report from the world’s largest reinsurance company.

In a report published Tuesday, German reinsurance giant Munich Re said natural disasters in 2023 resulted in global economic losses roughly in line with those of the year before, while insured losses for the year came in at $95 billion (down from $125 billion in 2022).

Munich Re said the figures were characterized by a large number of severe regional storms, noting that assets of around $66 billion were destroyed by thunderstorms in North America last year, of which $50 billion was insured. In Europe, thunderstorm losses amounted to $10 billion, of which $8 billion was insured.

It said such high thunderstorm losses were unprecedented for the U.S. and Europe. The company warned that loss statistics from thunderstorms, which are sometimes referred to as “secondary perils” or smaller to midsized events, were likely to trend higher in the coming years.

The climate crisis is making extreme weather more frequent and more intense.

Munich Re said that while the economic and insured losses from 2023 may not appear extraordinary, it marks another year of “extremely high” damages even without any so-called mega-disasters in industrialized countries.

In 2022, for example, Hurricane Ian was found to have resulted in overall economic losses of a whopping $100 billion and insured losses of $60 billion.

Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geo scientist at Munich Re, said annual economic losses have previously been “significantly influenced” by mega-disasters, and it was merely by chance that one did not occur last year.

“If we as a society don’t put more weight on this topic of resilience then losses, especially from weather-related events, will most likely go up in the future. It will become more and more, not just an economic challenge, but a social challenge as well,” Rauch told CNBC via videoconference.

Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria

The number of deaths caused by natural disasters rose to 74,000 last year, Munch Re said — far above the annual average of 10,000 for the last five years.

It said approximately 63,000 people died (85% of the year’s total deaths) as a result of earthquakes in 2023, noting that this was more than at any time since 2010.

A series of earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in early February was the year’s most destructive natural disaster, Munich Re said, with overall economic losses of around $50 billion.

These powerful earthquakes killed more than 55,000 people in Turkey and Syria, with a further 100,000 injured, according to the British Red Cross.

Munich Re’s Rauch highlighted a major difference between the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and the earthquake in Japan in early 2024, saying that while both were of a similar magnitude and took place in a densely populated region, the death toll in Japan reportedly stands at around 160.

“A very different number,” Rauch said. “And our assessment, based on the information available today, is that obviously the building codes and the way buildings have performed under these earthquakes loads, they were just better prepared for these hazards.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday released its monthly climate report, which included details of the country’s billion-dollar extreme weather events in the first 10 months of the year. With two months left in 2023, the 25 disasters tallied to date are already the most for any year since 1980, when NOAA started keeping such records.

This year’s major disasters included flooding events in the Northeast and in California, a deadly wildfire in Hawaii, Hurricane Idalia in August, a drought and heat wave event that gripped the South and Midwest, and a flurry of severe storms around the country.

In a separate report, NASA said parts of the U.S. could see an increase in flooding this winter if a strong El Niño develops. El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern characterized by warmer-than-usual waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. The phenomenon affects global temperatures, rainfall, hurricanes and severe storms, and typically drives climate anomalies and extremes.

If a strong El Niño develops this winter, NASA scientists said cities along the western coast could see an increase in the frequency of high-tide flooding that can turn roads into waterways and inundate low-lying structures.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

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Recording-breaking winds in France and across much of Western Europe left at least five people dead and injured several others as Storm Ciarán swept through the continent overnight and into Thursday, plunging vast numbers into darkness, devastating homes and causing travel mayhem in several countries.

Winds of more than 190 kph (118 mph) slammed the northern tip of France’s Atlantic coast, uprooting trees and blowing out windows.

A truck driver was killed when his vehicle was hit by a tree in northern France’s inland Aisne region, Transport Minister Clement Beaune said. Another person has been badly injured at a university in the northern city of Roubaix, and 15 other people were hurt around western and northern France, authorities announced. Seven of the injured were emergency workers.

Dutch airline KLM scrapped all flights leaving and arriving in the Netherlands from the early afternoon until the end of the day, citing the high sustained wind speeds and powerful gusts expected in the country.

Huge waves slammed into French ports and shorelines, as wind flattened street signs and ripped off roofing. Felled trees blocked roads around western France, according to Associated Press reporters and images on French media and social networks.

About 1.2 million French households were left without electricity on Thursday, electrical utility Enedis said in a statement. That includes about half of the homes in Brittany, the Atlantic peninsula hardest hit by Ciarán. Enedis said it would deploy 3,000 workers to restore power when conditions allowed.

The wind reached up to around 160 kph (nearly 100 mph) on the Normandy coast and up to around 150 kph (90 mph) inland. Fishing crews put their livelihoods on hold and stayed ashore. Local authorities closed forests, parks and beachfronts in some regions.

Local trains were canceled across a swath of western France, and all roads in the Finistère region of Brittany were closed Thursday morning. Beaune urged people to avoid driving and exercise caution when traveling across areas with weather warnings.

‘’We see how roads can be fatal in these circumstances,’’ he told broadcaster France-Info.

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In Spain, where the storm battered much of the country with heavy rains and gale force winds, emergency services in Madrid said a woman died Thursday after a tree fell on her. Three other people were slightly injured in the incident on a city center street. Parks in the capital and other cities in Spain were closed, and several trains and flights were canceled.

One person died in central Ghent, Belgium, when a tree fell on them in a park. Another person was injured during the same incident. Local and national authorities warned residents not to get close to green spaces for fear of falling trees. Belgian media also reported that in the port city of Antwerp, one man was seriously injured when a wall collapsed under the pressure from the relentless high winds.

A storm warning was issued for the North Sea coast in Germany, and a warning of high winds for part of the Baltic Sea coast. Authorities said that a 46-year-old woman was fatally injured by a falling tree in the Harz mountains in northern Germany.

Thousands were also without power in the United Kingdom. Sharp gusts blew roofs off buildings and toppled trees. Some had to evacuate their homes and seek refuge in hotels as Ciarán pummeled the south of England.

Hundreds of schools stayed closed in the southwest England coastal communities of Cornwall and Devon, as downed trees and flooding hindered morning commutes all across the southeast.

Rail companies urged commuters to work from home if possible because of possible falling trees and debris on the tracks. P&O Ferries said tourist traffic was being sent away from the Port of Dover, which has suspended sailings. The roof of a lorry was torn off in the town, local police said, while a major road has been partly closed for public safety.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency urged people to keep away from the coast.

“Stay out of dangerous situations,’’ the agency tweeted. “A selfie in stormy conditions isn’t worth risking your life for.”

Simon Partridge, senior meteorologist at U.K. government weather agency the Met Office, said just after 1330 GMT (9:30 a.m. EDT) that for England at least, “thankfully the worst of it is over.”

“The storm itself is off the East Anglian Coast, it’s just gone into the southern North Sea, and … it’s starting to lose the energy it had when it first arrived,” he said.

The area of low pressure was now filling, Partridge explained, saying the system would continue to weaken over the next 12 hours.

But a lot of rain associated with the storm was still to fall, he cautioned, singling out North Wales, the West Midlands and East Coast for downpours.

“We’re not quite out of the woods just yet,” he added.

Britain’s Environment Agency urged people to prepare for inland flooding, as some river levels remain high, together with ground that is saturated. By just after midday, there were 82 flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, and 197 flood alerts, meaning flooding is possible, in place across England.

“Flooding of low-lying coastal roads is also possible and people must avoid driving through flood water, as just 30cm of flowing water is enough to move your car,” said the agency’s flood duty manager, Ben Lukey.

The Met Office said the mean sea level pressure reading for England and Wales in November is the lowest ever, breaking a record which had stood since 1916.

And Partridge said the battering taken by the Channel Islands was “very much on par” with that seen in the so-called Great Storm of 1987, which caused devastation across the U.K.

On the islands last night, winds were between 144 kph (90 mph) and 160 kph (100 mph) for a full three hours. They smashed windows, damaged cars and tore roofs from buildings. Flights from airports on the islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were canceled.

“The hailstones were quite a bit heavier and bigger than a golf ball and we’ve had three windows damaged by them – in my daughter’s bedroom, a landing and a bathroom,’’ said Suzie Phillips, a homeowner in Jersey. “It was quite worrying, especially for the kids — they were quite anxious about it.”

Jersey Police tweeted that 35 people were relocated after their homes were damaged and three others were hospitalized. They said trees were down across the island.

Dutch media reported that several people had been hit by falling trees in different parts of the Netherlands, one person killed in the southern town of Venray. The eighth edition of the Dutch headwind cycling championship was swiftly organized for riders prepared to pedal into the teeth of the storm Thursday along an 8½-kilometer (5.3-mile) coastal barrier on bikes with no gears.

The event is only held when a southwesterly storm with a minimum of wind force seven barrels up the North Sea coast.

But the winds are so strong that a permit was denied. Organizer Robrecht Stoekenbroek said he was “super disappointed.”

“We are organizing this event because it’s so crazy,” he said. “It’s about man against nature and it (the wind) needs to be like this.”

The heart of the storm will move east during the day, forecasters said.

___

Danica Kirka and Ed Davey in London, Raf Casert in Brussels, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Ciarán Giles in Madrid, Aleksandar Furtula in Neeltje Jans, Netherlands, and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

More than 2,000 people were rescued after Wednesday’s floods, the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority said in a statement, adding that state authorities set up 26 relief camps for more than 22,000 people impacted by the floods.

The Press Trust of India news agency reported that 102 people were missing and cited state government officials saying 14 people died in the floods.

Among the missing were 22 army soldiers, officials said. One soldier who had been reported missing on Wednesday was later rescued by authorities, local media reported. Some army camps and vehicles were submerged under mud following the floods.

Eleven bridges were washed away by the floodwaters, which also hit pipelines and damaged or destroyed more than 270 houses in four districts, officials said.

The flooding occurred along the Teesta River in the Lachen Valley in Sikkim state and was worsened when parts of a dam were washed away.

Several towns, including Dikchu and Rangpo in the Teesta basin, were flooded, and schools in four districts were ordered shut until Sunday, the state’s education department said.

Parts of a highway that links Sikkim, the state capital, with the rest of the country were washed away.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office said in a statement that the government would support state authorities in the aftermath of the flooding.

The flooding was caused by cloudbursts — sudden, very heavy rains — which are defined as when more than 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) of rainfall occurs within 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) within an hour. Cloudbursts can cause intense flooding and landslides affecting thousands of people.

The mountainous Himalayan region where Sikkim is located has seen heavy monsoon rains this season.

Nearly 50 people died in flash floods and landslides in August in nearby Himachal Pradesh state. Record rains in July killed more than 100 people over two weeks in northern India, as roads were waterlogged and homes collapsed.

Disasters caused by landslides and floods are common in India’s Himalayan region during the June-September monsoon season. Scientists say they are becoming more frequent as global warming contributes to the melting of glaciers there.

“This is, incredibly sadly, another classic case of a cascading hazard chain that amplifies as you go downstream,” said Jakob Steiner, a climate scientist with the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, commenting on Wednesday’s flash flooding.

Earlier this year, Steiner’s organization published a report saying that Himalayan glaciers could lose 80% of their volume if global warming isn’t controlled.

In February 2021, flash floods killed nearly 200 people and washed away houses in Uttarakhand state in northern India.

___

Associated Press Writer Sibi Arasu contributed to this report from Bengaluru, India.

The Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon from Minneapolis to neighboring St. Paul had been expected to draw up to 8,000 runners when organizers called it off early Sunday. The organizers, Twin Cities in Motion, also canceled a separate 10-mile race drawing 12,000 runners.

In an email to race participants early Sunday, race organizers said: “The latest weather forecast update projects record-setting heat conditions that do not allow a safe event for runners, supporters and volunteers.”

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In the days leading up to Sunday’s race, organizers had warned that weather conditions could be unsafe. But the race was expected to still be held, with additional safety precautions in place. By Sunday morning, a “black flag” warning was issued, prompting the event’s cancellation.

The National Weather Service predicted a midday high Sunday of 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius).

Some runners had lined up for the race’s start early Sunday and told the Minneapolis Star Tribune they planned to run anyway.

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“It’s always been really hot here, but nothing like this past summer,” said Maxwell, 50, who last week opened her windows for the first time since March and walked her dog outdoors for the first time since May. “I was seriously scared. Like, what if this doesn’t end and this is how it’s going to be?”

Maxwell blames climate change, and she’s not alone.

New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates that extreme weather, including a summer that brought dangerous heat for much of the United States, is bolstering Americans’ belief that they’ve personally felt the impact of climate change.

About 9 in 10 Americans (87%) say they have experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years — including drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or flooding — up from 79% who said that just a few months ago in April. And about three-quarters of those believe climate change is at least partly to blame.

In total, 64% of U.S. adults say both that they’ve recently experienced extreme weather and that they believe it was caused at least partially by climate change, up from 54% in April. And about 65% say climate change will have or already has had a major impact in their lifetime.

This summer’s heat might be a big factor: About three-quarters of Americans (74%) say they’ve been affected by extremely hot weather or extreme heat waves in the last five years, up from 55% in April — and of those, 92% said they’ve had that experience just in the past few months.

This summer was the hottest ever measured in the Northern Hemisphere, according to the World Meteorological Organization and the European climate service Copernicus.

Millions of Americans also were affected by the worst wildfire season in Canada’s history, which sent choking smoke into parts of the U.S. About six in 10 U.S. adults say haze or smoke from the wildfires affected them “a lot” (15%) or “a little” (48%) in recent months.

And around the world, extreme heat, storms, flooding and wildfires have affected tens of millions of people this year, with scientists saying climate change has made such events more likely and intense.

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said researchers there have conducted twice-yearly surveys of Americans for 15 years, but it wasn’t until 2016 that they saw an indication that people’s experience with extreme weather was affecting their views about climate change. “And the signal has been getting stronger and stronger year by year as these conditions continue to get worse and worse,” he said.

But he also believes that media coverage of climate change has changed dramatically, and that the public is interpreting information in a more scientific way than they did even a decade ago.

Seventy-six-year-old Bruce Alvord, of Hagerstown, Maryland, said it wasn’t unusual to experience days with a 112-degree heat index this summer, and health conditions mean that “heat really bothers me because it’s restricted what I can do.”

Even so, the retired government worker doesn’t believe in human-caused climate change; he recalls stories from his grandparents about bad weather, and thinks the climate is fluctuating on its own.

“The way the way I look at it is I think it’s a bunch of powerful politicians and lobbying groups that … have their agenda,” said Alvord, a Republican who sees no need to change his own habits or for the government to do more. “I drive a Chrysler 300 (with a V8 engine). I use premium gas. I get 15 miles a gallon. I don’t give a damn.”

The AP-NORC poll found significant differences between Democrats and Republicans. Among those who have experienced extreme weather, Democrats (93%) are more certain that climate change was a cause, compared to just half of Republicans (48%).

About 9 in 10 Democrats say climate change is happening, with nearly all of the remaining Democrats being unsure about whether climate change is happening (5%), rather than outright rejecting it. Republicans are split: 49% say climate change is happening, but 26% say it’s not and an additional 25% are unsure. Overall, 74% of Americans say climate change is happening, largely unchanged from April.

Republican Ronald Livingston, 70, of Clute, Texas, said he’s not sure if human activity is causing climate change, “but I know something is going on because we have been sweating our butts off.”

The retired history teacher said it didn’t rain for several months this year, killing his grass and drying up a slough on his property where he sometimes fishes. It was so hot — with 45 days of 100 degrees or more — that he could barely go outside, and he struggled to grow a garden. He also believes that hurricanes are getting stronger.

And after this summer, he’s keeping an open mind about climate change.

“It worries me to the extent that I don’t think we can go two or three more years of this,” Livingston said.

Jeremiah Bohr, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh who studies climate change communication, said scientific evidence “is not going to change the minds that haven’t already been changed.” But people might be swayed if people or institutions they already trust become convinced and spread the word, Bohr said.

After a brutal summer, Maxwell, the Phoenix resident, said she hopes more Americans will accept that climate change is happening and that people are making it worse, and support measures to slow it.

“It seems very, very obvious to me, with all of the extreme weather and the hurricanes and flooding,” said Maxwell. “I just can’t imagine that people wouldn’t.”

___

The poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Sept. 7-11, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

The storm came ashore near Emerald Isle with near-hurricane-strength winds of 70 mph (113 kph) at around 6:15 a.m. but was expected to weaken as it moves north Saturday and then shifts northeast on Sunday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, noting that the maximum sustained winds had dropped to 45 mph (80 kph) by the afternoon.

Videos from social media showed riverfront communities in North Carolina such as New Bern, Belhaven and Washington experiencing significant flooding.

Even before it made landfall, the storm proved treacherous enough that five people had to be rescued by the Coast Guard on Friday night from a boat anchored down near the North Carolina coastline.

Ophelia promises a weekend of windy conditions and heavy rain as it churns up the East Coast, with the storm moving north at about 13 mph (21 kph) as of Saturday morning. Parts of North Carolina and Virginia can expect up to 8 inches of rain (20 centimeters), with 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) forecast in the rest of the mid-Atlantic region through Sunday. Some New Jersey shore communities, including Sea Isle City, had already experienced some flooding Saturday.

Philippe Papin, a hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said the primary risk of the storm system over the next couple of days will be the threat of floods from the rain.

“There have been tropical storm-force winds observed, but those are starting to gradually subside as the system moves further inland,” Papin said in an interview early Saturday. “However, there is a significant flooding rainfall threat for a large portion of eastern North Carolina into southern Virginia over the next 12 to 24 hours.”

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Power outages spread through more states beyond North Carolina, where tens of thousands of homes and businesses remained without electricity across several eastern counties as of Saturday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.

“When you have that slow-moving storm with several inches of rain, coupled with a gust that gets to 30, 40 miles per hour, that’s enough to bring down a tree or to bring down limbs,” Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks told WTVD-TV on Saturday. “And that’s what we’ve seen in most of the areas where we’ve experienced outages.”

Brian Haines, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, said there were also reports of downed trees, but no major road closings.

“North Carolina Emergency Management continues to monitor the situation and to work with our county partners, who are currently not reporting any resource needs,” Haines said Saturday morning.

A storm surge warning, indicating danger from rising ocean water pushed inland by Ophelia, was in effect from Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, to Chincoteague, Virginia. Surges between 3 and 5 feet (0.9 and 1.5 meters) were forecast in some areas. A tropical storm warning was issued from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to Fenwick Island, Delaware.

Five people, including three children 10 or younger, needed the Coast Guard’s help on the water when conditions worsened Friday. They were aboard a 38-foot (12-meter) catamaran anchored in Lookout Bight in Cape Lookout, North Carolina, stuck in choppy water with strong winds.

According to the Coast Guard, the sailboat’s owner called them on a cellphone, prompting a nighttime rescue mission in which the crew used flares to navigate to the five people using a Coast Guard boat, then helped them aboard and left the sailboat behind. A Coast Guard helicopter lit up the path back to the station. There were no injuries reported and all five were wearing lifejackets.

The governors of North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland each declared a state of emergency on Friday and several weekend events were canceled. In Washington, the Nationals baseball team postponed its Saturday game until Sunday. The North Carolina Ferry System has suspended service on all routes until conditions improve.

Nancy Shoemaker and her husband Bob stopped to pick up sandbags on Friday in a park in Maryland’s capital, Annapolis. A surge of water during a storm last October washed away sandbags they put in their yard, which is right next to the water.

“We’re hoping it won’t be that way this time,” Nancy Shoemaker said. “If we have a lot of wind and a lot of surge, it can look like the ocean out there, so that’s a problem.”

It is not uncommon for one or two tropical storms, or even hurricanes, to develop right off the East Coast each year, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said.

“We’re right at the peak of hurricane season, we can basically have storms form anywhere across much of the Atlantic basin,” Brennan said in an interview Friday.

Scientists say climate change could result in hurricanes expanding their reach into mid-latitude regions more often, making storms like this month’s Hurricane Lee more common.

One study simulated tropical cyclone tracks from pre-industrial times, modern times and a future with higher emissions. It found that hurricanes would track closer to the coasts including around Boston, New York and Virginia and be more likely to form along the Southeast coast.

___

AP Radio reporter Jackie Quinn in Washington and AP writers Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, and Ron Todt in Philadelphia contributed.

Australia’s most populous city after Melbourne has recorded some of the world’s worst air quality readings since the controlled burning of fuel loads in the surrounding landscapes began on Sunday.

Fire authorities have only carried out 14% of planned hazard reduction burns across New South Wales state as of this week and are attempting to catch up before what is forecast to be a hot and dry Southern Hemisphere summer.

New South Wales Rural Fire Service Inspector Ben Shepherd said the burns were suspended on Thursday and Friday because of excessive pollution levels and that Sydney’s air was expected to clear soon.

“It’s mostly due to the smoke,” Shepherd said of the postponements.

“For the next 48 hours, we’ll give this smoke a chance to clear without fire agencies adding additional smoke to it,” Shepherd added.

Rain had prevented burning last week and an increased fire danger due to rising temperatures and windy conditions was expected to prevent burning late next week.

The coming wildfire season across southeast Australia is expected to be the most destructive since the catastrophic Black Summer wildfires of 2019-20.

The fires killed at least 33 people including 10 firefighters, destroyed more than 3,000 hones, razed 19 million hectares (47 million acres) and displaced thousands of residents.

Medical authorities estimated more than 400 people were killed by the smoke, which enveloped major cities.

Since then, three successive La Lina weather events have brought unusually wet and mild summers.

The rain has also created larger fuel loads and frustrated authorities’ hazard reduction plans. Only a quarter of the hazard reduction target was achieved through controlled burning across New South Wales last fiscal year.

Mediterranean storm Daniel caused deadly flooding Sunday in many towns of eastern Libya, but the worst-hit was the Mediterranean city of Derna. Two dams in the mountains above the city collapsed, sending floodwaters roaring down the Wadi Derna river and through the city center, sweeping away entire city blocks.

Derna has struggled to get help after Sunday night’s deluge washed away most access roads. Aid workers who managed to reach the city described devastation in its center, with thousands still missing and tens of thousands left homeless.

“Bodies are everywhere, inside houses, in the streets, at sea. Wherever you go, you find dead men, women, and children,” Emad al-Falah, an aid worker from Benghazi, said over the phone from Derna. “Entire families were lost.”

“We are just seeing the scale and severity of disasters from natural hazards increasing and that is putting a drain on resources — both financial and human resources — and also, I’ll be honest, empathy,” said Patricia McIlreavy, CEO of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.

Recovery from the devastation could take years, McIlreavy said, and encouraged people to consider longer-term, unrestricted giving rather than rushing to give immediately when conditions are still rapidly changing.

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Libya Sep 12, 2023

More than 8,000 killed after heavy storm breaks dams in eastern Libya

Libya Sep 13, 2023

Searchers race to recover bodies in Libyan city as death toll surpasses 8,000 after devastating floods

Michael Thatcher, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, which evaluates and rates nonprofits, said getting aid into Libya may be challenging due to ongoing sanctions the U.S. has placed against the country. Generally, those sanctions are waived following a natural disaster, as they were for Syria earlier this year following a deadly earthquake there.

Thatcher said larger international nonprofits, like The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), will have an easier time navigating sanctions than a smaller U.S. nonprofit with no previous interaction with the Libyan governments.

Many worry the fact that the country has two governments supported by different countries may slow rescue and recovery efforts.

“Getting $100 into Libya is hard,” Thatcher said. “Getting $100 to Doctors Without Borders or World Vision or another one of those large, well-established charities to use in Libya is much easier because they already have third parties that are working with them there.”

Charity Navigator has assembled a list of nonprofits that work in Libya, Thatcher said.

Here are some other groups that have responded and are looking for additional support:

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC): The IFRC announced an emergency appeal for 10 million Swiss Francs to scale up the Libyan Red Crescent’s relief efforts in response to the floods caused by Storm Daniel in north-eastern Libya, the organization said on its website. To help contribute to fund the emergency appeal and support the people of Libya in their time of dire need, go to the IFRC donation page here.

Islamic Relief: Islamic Relief has already pledged 100,000 British pounds ($125,000) for Libya relief efforts and has launched the Libya Floods Emergency Appeal to raise more funds to give local humanitarian organizations to use for affected communities. You can donate to that fund here.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF): Doctors Without Borders does not currently work in the areas of Libya affected by the floods. However, an MSF emergency team is set to arrive in Derna on Sept. 14 to assess the medical needs and donate emergency medical kits to care for the wounded and body bags to the Libyan Red Crescent. You can donate to Doctors Without Borders here.

GlobalGiving: Your donation to GlobalGiving’s Libya Flood Relief Fund will provide emergency relief and long-term support to affected communities, especially in the eastern city of Derna. Find more information and links to donate here.

The startling death and devastation wreaked by Mediterranean storm Daniel pointed to the storm’s intensity, but also the vulnerability of a nation torn apart by chaos for more than a decade. The country is divided by rival governments, one in the east, the other in the west, and the result has been neglect of infrastructure in many areas.

Outside help was only just starting to reach Derna on Tuesday, more than 36 hours after the disaster struck. The floods damaged or destroyed many access roads to the coastal city of some 89,000.

Footage showed dozens of bodies covered by blankets in the yard of one hospital. Another image showed a mass grave piled with bodies. More than 2,000 corpses were collected, and half of them had been buried as of Tuesday evening, the health minister for eastern Libya said.

The death toll in Derna alone has exceeded 5,300, the state-run news agency quoted Mohammed Abu-Lamousha, a spokesman for the east Libya interior ministry, as saying Tuesday. Derna’s ambulance authority earlier put the toll at 2,300.

But the toll is likely to be higher, said Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He told a U.N. briefing in Geneva via videoconference from Tunisia that at least 10,000 people were still missing. He said later Tuesday that more than 40,000 people have been displaced.

The situation in Libya is “as devastating as the situation in Morocco,” Ramadan said, referring to the deadly earthquake that hit near the city of Marrakesh on Friday night.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres conveyed his solidarity with the Libyan people and said the United Nations “is working with local, national and international partners to get urgently needed humanitarian assistance to those in affected areas,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The destruction came to Derna and other parts of eastern Libya on Sunday night. As the storm pounded the coast, Derna residents said they heard loud explosions and realized that dams outside the city had collapsed. Flash floods were unleashed down Wadi Derna, a river running from the mountains through the city and into the sea.

The wall of water “erased everything in its way,” said one resident, Ahmed Abdalla.

Videos posted online by residents showed large swaths of mud and wreckage where the raging waters had swept away neighborhoods on both banks of the river. Multi-story apartment buildings that once were well back from the river had facades ripped away and concrete floors collapsed. Cars lifted by the flood were left dumped on top of each other.

Libya’s National Meteorological Center said Tuesday it issued early warnings for Storm Daniel, an “extreme weather event,” 72 hours before its occurrence, and notified all governmental authorities by e-mails and through media … “urging them to take preventive measures.” It said that Bayda recorded a record 16.3 inches of rain from Sunday to Monday.

On Tuesday, local emergency responders, including troops, government workers, volunteers and residents dug through rubble looking for the dead. They also used inflatable boats to retrieve bodies from the water.

Many bodies were believed trapped under rubble or had been washed out into the Mediterranean Sea, said eastern Libya’s health minister, Othman Abduljaleel.

“We were stunned by the amount of destruction … the tragedy is very significant, and beyond the capacity of Derna and the government,” Abduljaleel told The Associated Press on the phone from Derna.

Red Crescent teams from other parts of Libya also arrived in Derna on Tuesday morning but extra excavators and other equipment had yet to get there.

Flooding often happens in Libya during rainy season, but rarely with this much destruction. A key question was how the rains were able to burst through two dams outside Derna – whether because of poor maintenance or sheer volume of rain.

Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist and meteorologist at Leipzig University, said in a statement that Daniel dumped 15.7 inches of rain on eastern Libya in a short time.

“The infrastructure could probably not cope, leading to the collapse of the dam,” he said, adding that human-induced rises in water surface temperatures likely added to the storm’s intensity.

Local authorities have neglected Derna for years. “Even the maintenance aspect was simply absent. Everything kept being delayed,” said Jalel Harchaoui, an associate fellow specializing in Libya at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies.

Factionalism also comes into play. Derna was for several years controlled by Islamic militant groups. Military commander Khalifa Hifter, the strongman of the east Libya government, captured the city in 2019 only after months of tough urban fighting.

The eastern government has been suspicious of the city ever since and has sought to sideline its residents from any decision-making, said Harchaoui. “This mistrust might prove calamitous during the upcoming post-disaster period,” he said.

Hifter’s eastern government based in the city of Benghazi is locked in a bitter rivalry with the western government in the capital of Tripoli. Each is backed by powerful militias and by foreign powers. Hifter is also backed by Egypt, Russia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, while the west Libya administration is backed by Turkey, Qatar and Italy.

Still, the initial reaction to the disaster brought some crossing of the divide.

The Tripoli-based government of western Libya sent a plane with 14 tons of medical supplies and health workers to Benghazi. It also said it had allocated the equivalent of $412 million for reconstruction in Derna and other eastern towns. Airplanes arrived Tuesday in Benghazi carrying humanitarian aid and rescue teams from Egypt, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Egypt’s military chief of staff met with Hifter to coordinate aid. Germany, France and Italy said they also were sending rescue personnel and aid.

It was not clear how quickly the aid could be moved to Derna, 150 miles east of Benghazi, given conditions on the ground. Ahmed Amdourd, a Derna municipal official, called for a sea corridor to deliver aid and equipment.

President Joe Biden said in a statement Tuesday that the United States is sending emergency funds to relief organizations and coordinating with the Libyan authorities and the U.N. to provide additional support.

“Jill and I send our deepest condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones in the devastating floods in Libya,” he said.

The storm hit other areas in eastern Libya, including the town of Bayda, where about 50 people were reported dead. The Medical Center of Bayda, the main hospital, was flooded and patients had to be evacuated, according to footage shared by the center on Facebook.

Other towns that suffered included Susa, Marj and Shahatt, according to the government. Hundreds of families were displaced and took shelter in schools and other government buildings in Benghazi and elsewhere in eastern Libya.

Northeast Libya is one of the country’s most fertile and green regions. The Jabal al-Akhdar area — where Bayda, Marj and Shahatt are located — has one of the country’s highest average annual rainfalls, according to the World Bank.

Idalia’s maximum sustained winds were up to 110 mph Tuesday evening as it moved north at 18 mph about 125 miles west of Tampa, according to the latest update from the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

• WATCH LIVE: Track Hurricane Idalia as it moves through Gulf toward Florida

Forecasters said Idalia is expected to rapidly intensify, becoming an “extremely dangerous major hurricane” of Category 4 intensity as it approaches Florida.

The center of Idalia was forecast to reach the Gulf coast of Florida within the hurricane warning area on Wednesday, and move close to the Carolina coastline on Thursday.

The center of Idalia will most likely hit a lightly populated area of the Gulf Coast known as the Big Bend before crossing the peninsula and drenching southern Georgia along with the Carolinas on Thursday, forecasters said.

The National Weather Service in Tallahassee called Idalia “an unprecedented event” since no major hurricanes on record have ever passed through the bay abutting the Big Bend region.

“You still have time this morning to make your final preparations … but you gotta do that now,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday at the state’s emergency operations center.

Tolls have been waived on highways out of the danger area, shelters have opened, hotels are prepared to take evacuees and more than 30,000 utility workers are being staged to make repairs as quickly as possible in the hurricane’s wake, DeSantis said.

“You do not have to leave the state. You don’t have to drive hundreds of miles. You have to get to higher ground in a safe structure. You can ride the storm out there, then go back to your home,” DeSantis said.

Florida residents loaded up on sandbags and evacuated from homes in low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast to prepare for Idalia, which was expected to hit with potentially life-threatening storm surges.

In addition to hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings that stretched up and down Florida’s west coast from the Keys to the Panhandle, storm surge watches and warnings were also in effect.

“Catastrophic impacts from storm surge inundation of 10 to 15 feet above ground level and destructive waves are expected somewhere between Aucilla River and Yankeetown, Florida,” the NHC said Tuesday. “Life-threatening storm surge inundation is likely elsewhere along portions of the Florida Gulf Coast where a storm surge warning is in effect.”

As the state prepared, Idalia thrashed Cuba with heavy rain, especially in the westernmost part of the island, where the tobacco-producing province of Pinar del Rio is still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian almost a year ago.

Authorities in the province issued a state of alert, and residents were evacuated to friends’ and relatives’ homes as authorities monitored the Cuyaguateje river for possible flooding. As much as 10 centimeters of rain fell in Cuba on Sunday, meteorological stations reported.

Idalia is expected to start affecting Florida with hurricane-force winds as soon as late Tuesday and arrive on the coast by Wednesday. It is the first storm to hit Florida this hurricane season and a potentially big blow to the state, which is also dealing with lingering damage from last year’s Hurricane Ian.

Idalia is also the latest in a summer of natural disasters, including wildfires in Hawaii, Canada and Greece; the first tropical storm to hit California in 84 years, and devastating flooding in Vermont.

“Just got to prepare for these things, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst and, you know, hunker down, as they say,” said Derek Hughes as he waited to load up his car with sandbags at a city park in Tampa.

DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 49 counties, a broad swath that stretches across the northern half of the state from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Coast. The state has mobilized 1,100 National Guard members, who have 2,400 high-water vehicles and 12 aircraft at their disposal for rescue and recovery efforts.

With a large stretch of Florida’s western coast at risk for storm surges and floods, evacuation notices were issued in 22 counties, with mandatory orders for some people in eight of those counties. Many of the notices were for low-lying and coastal areas and for people living in mobile and manufactured homes, recreational vehicles or boats, and for people who would be vulnerable in a power outage.

Many school districts along the Gulf Coast were to be closed through at least Wednesday. Several colleges and universities also closed, including the University of Florida in Gainesville. Florida State University in Tallahassee said its campus would be closed through Friday.

Tampa International Airport and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport said they would close on Tuesday, and the Sunrail commuter rail service in Orlando was being suspended.

DeSantis warned of a “major impact” to the state.

“The property — we can rebuild someone’s home,” DeSantis said during a news conference Monday. “You can’t unring the bell, though, if somebody stays in harm’s way and does battle with Mother Nature.”

DeSantis said the Florida Department of Transportation would waive tolls on highways in the Tampa area and the Big Bend starting at 4 a.m. Tuesday to help ease any burden on people in the path of the storm.

As Gulf Coast residents packed up their cars or hauled out generators in case of power outages, state officials warned about potential fuel contamination at dozens of gas stations.

President Joe Biden spoke to DeSantis on Monday morning, telling the Florida governor that he had approved an emergency declaration for the state, the White House said in a news release. DeSantis is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Southwest Florida is still recovering from Hurricane Ian, which was responsible last year for almost 150 deaths. The Category 5 hurricane damaged 52,000 structures, nearly 20,000 of which were destroyed or severely damaged.

So far this year, the U.S. East Coast has been spared from cyclones. But in the West earlier this month, Tropical Storm Hilary caused widespread flooding, mudslides and road closures in Mexico, California, Nevada and points north.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently said the 2023 hurricane season would be far busier than initially forecast, partly because of extremely warm ocean temperatures. The season runs through Nov. 30, with August and September typically the peak.

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July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.

“These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia.

Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

Days in July have been hotter than previously recorded from July 2 on. It’s been so extra warm that Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization made the unusual early announcement that it was likely the hottest month days before it ended. Tuesday’s calculations made it official.

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The month was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. In 2015, the nations of the world agreed to try to prevent long-term warming — not individual months or even years, but decades — that is 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times.

Last month was so hot, it was .7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the average July from 1991 to 2020, Copernicus said. The worlds oceans were half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous 30 years and the North Atlantic was 1.05 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than average. Antarctica set record lows for sea ice, 15% below average for this time of year.

Copernicus’ records go back to 1940. That temperature would be hotter than any month the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recorded and their records go back to 1850. But scientists say it’s actually the hottest in a far longer time period.

“It’s a stunning record and makes it quite clearly the warmest month on Earth in ten thousand years,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. He wasn’t part of the Copernicus team.

Rahmstorf cited studies that use tree rings and other proxies that show present times are the warmest since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, about 10,000 years ago. And before the Holocene started there was an ice age, so it would be logical to even say this is the warmest record for 120,000 years, he said.

“We should not care about July because it’s a record, but because it won’t be a record for long,” said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto. “It’s an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.”

The World Organization of the Scout Movement said it received confirmation from South Korea’s government of the early departure for all participants in the southwestern county of Buan. That means quickly moving tens of thousands of scouts — mostly teenagers — from 158 countries out of the storm’s path.

South Korea’s weather agency reported that Khanun was expected to make landfall in South Korea on Thursday morning, potentially packing winds as strong as 118 to 154 kilometers (73 to 95 miles) per hour. Large swaths of the country’s south, including Buan, could be affected by the storm as early as Wednesday, the agency said.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office said he called for “contingency” plans, which could include relocating them to hotels and other facilities in the country’s capital, Seoul, and nearby metropolitan areas. Khanun has taken an unusual, meandering path around Japan’s southwestern islands for more than a week, dumping heavy rain, knocking out power to thousands of homes and disrupting flights and train services. On Monday afternoon, it had sustained winds of 108 kilometers (67 miles) per hour, with higher gusts, and was forecast to maintain that strength as it brushed Japan’s main island of Kyushu this week, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The agency said the storm was at about 160 kilometers (99 miles) east of Amami city on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu and moving gradually toward the north as of Monday afternoon. It warned residents in affected regions to watch out for mudslides, high winds and rough seas.

The storm has caused one death and 70 injuries on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, according to the country’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Due to the forecast of harsh weather in the region, West Japan Railway Co. said there was a possibility of suspending “Shinkansen” bullet train services from Wednesday night to Thursday morning.

Hot temperatures have already forced thousands of British and American scouts to leave the site, which is made on land reclaimed from sea. Hundreds of participants had been treated for heat-related ailments since the jamboree started on Wednesday. Long before the event’s start, critics raised concerns about bringing such large numbers of young people to a vast, treeless area lacking protection from the summer heat.

Organizers earlier on Monday were scurrying to come up with plans to evacuate the scouts ahead of the storm’s arrival. Choi Chang-haeng, secretary-general of the jamboree’s organizing committee, said organizers have secured more than 340 evacuation venues, including community centers and gyms, in regions near Buan.

About 40,000 scouts — mostly teenagers — from 158 countries came to the jamboree, built on land reclaimed from the sea. About 4,500 were from the U.K., representing the largest national contingent, while about 1,000 were from the United States.

South Korea categorizes Khanun as a typhoon, defined as a tropical storm with winds stronger than 61 kilometers (38 miles) per hour. South Korea’s weather agency expects Khanun to weaken to a storm within the next five days.

—

Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Hebei province surrounding the capital Beijing on three sides issued alerts for several of its cities. The province of Heilongjiang to the north, was evacuating entire villages in anticipation of life-threatening deluges.

Rescue work remains underway. At least 20 people have been reported killed in Beijing’s outer suburbs and another 27 were missing following the weekend storms that quickly overwhelmed drainage systems.

Beijing usually has dry summers, but had a stretch of record-breaking heat this year that broke dramatically over the weekend with almost a week of constant rain and drizzle. Power was knocked out in areas, public transport and summer classes were suspended and citizens of the metropolis of more than 20 million were told to stay home.

The nearby cities of Tianjin and Zhuozhou were also hit hard. Fire services aided by volunteer rescue groups searched apartment buildings and railway tunnels for stranded people, bringing hundreds to safety.

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With it’s status as the nation’s capital, the headquarters of the ruling Communist Party and home to cultural treasures such as the ancient Forbidden City, Beijing has provided special protection from flooding through the diversion of waters to neighboring regions. That sparked complaints on social media Friday of flooding in surrounding areas that could allegedly have been avoided if the rainwater had been flushed through the capital’s system of canals and rivers.

Other regions, especially in China’s south, have suffered unusual deadly summer flooding. Other parts of the country are struggling with drought, putting further pressure on food supplies for the nation’s 1.4 billion people already struggling with the disruption in grain shipments resulting from Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Muddy water surging down streets washed away cars in the hilly Mentougou district on Beijing’s western edge.

“A couple of cars parked behind my apartment building disappeared in just one minute,” said resident Liu Shuanbao.

In Zhuozhou, southwest of Beijing, some 125,000 people from high-risk areas were moved to shelters, Xinhua said.

President Xi Jinping issued an order for local governments to go “all out” to rescue those trapped and minimize loss of life and property damage.

The government of Tianjin, a port east of Beijing, said 35,000 people were evacuated from near the swollen Yongding River.

As much as 500 millimeters (almost 20 inches) of rain has fallen in some places since Saturday, according to the Hebei province weather agency. Some areas reported as much as 90 millimeters (3 1/2 inches) of rainfall per hour.

Some 13 rivers exceeded warning levels in the Haihe Basin, which includes Beijing, Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, Xinhua said, citing the Ministry of Water Resources.

About 42,000 people were evacuated from areas of Shanxi province to Hebei’s west, it reported, citing emergency officials.

In early July, at least 15 people were killed by floods in the southwestern region of Chongqing, and about 5,590 people in the far northwestern province of Liaoning had to be evacuated. In the central province of Hubei, rainstorms trapped residents in their vehicles and homes.

China’s deadliest and most destructive floods in recent history were in 1998, when 4,150 people died, most of them along the Yangtze River.

In 2021, more than 300 people died in flooding in the central province of Henan. Record rainfall inundated the provincial capital of Zhengzhou on July 20 that year, turning streets into rushing rivers and flooding at least part of a subway line, trapping passengers in the cars.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Shandong province, authorities also warned of flooding risks as water levels on the Zhangwei River continued to rise.

China was largely spared by Typhoon Khanun, which on Thursday lashed Japan, damaging homes and knocking out power on Okinawa and other islands. China’s National Meteorological Center had initially expected the typhoon to make landfall in the southeastern Zhejiang province, where local authorities called ships into port and halted passenger ferry services.

Days of heavy rains have prompted authorities to close train stations and evacuate people in vulnerable communities to school gyms, state broadcaster CCTV reported Tuesday. Homes have been flooded, roads torn apart and cars piled into stacks.

The level of rainfall is highly unusual for Beijing, which generally enjoys a moderate, dry climate. Flooding in other parts of northern China that rarely see such large amounts of rain have led to scores of deaths.

Seasonal flooding hits large parts of China every summer, particularly in the semitropical south. However, some northern regions this year have reported the worst floods in 50 years.

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In early July, at least 15 people were killed by floods in the southwestern region of Chongqing, and some 5,590 people in the far northwestern province of Liaoning had to be evacuated. In the central province of Hubei, rainstorms have trapped residents in their vehicles and homes.

China’s deadliest and most destructive floods in recent history were in 1998, when 4,150 people died, most of them along the Yangtze River.

In 2021, more than 300 people died in flooding in the central province of Henan. Record rainfall inundated the provincial capital of Zhengzhou on July 20 that year, turning streets into rushing rivers and flooding at least part of a subway line.

These unusually strong heat waves are becoming more common, Tuesday’s study said. The same research found the increase in heat-trapping gases, largely from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has made another heat wave — the one in China — 50 times more likely with the potential to occur every five years or so.

A stagnant atmosphere, warmed by carbon dioxide and other gases, also made the European heat wave 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) hotter, the one in the United States and Mexico 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) warmer and the one in China one 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) toastier, the study found.

Several climate scientists, using tree rings and other stand-ins for temperature records, say this month’s heat is likely the hottest Earth has been in about 120,000 years, easily the hottest of human civilization.

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“Had there been no climate change, such an event would almost never have occurred,” said study lead author Mariam Zachariah, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London. She called heat waves in Europe and North America “virtually impossible” without the increase in heat from the mid 1800s. Statistically, the one in China could have happened without global warming.

Since the advent of industrial-scale burning, the world has warmed 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius), so “they are not rare in today’s climate and the role of climate change is absolutely overwhelming,” said Imperial College climate scientist Friederike Otto, who leads the team of volunteer international scientists at World Weather Attribution who do these studies.

The particularly intense heat waves that Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila are now roasting through are likely to happen about once every 15 years in the current climate, the study said.

But the climate is not stabilized, even at this level. If it warms a few more tenths of a degree, this month’s heat will become even more common, Otto said. Phoenix has had a record-shattering 25 straight days of temperatures at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) and more than a week when the nighttime temperature never dropped below 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 Celsius)

The heat in Spain, Italy, Greece and some Balkan states is likely to reoccur every decade in the current climate, the study said.

Because the weather attribution researchers started their analysis of three simultaneous heat waves on July 17, the results are not yet peer reviewed, which is the gold standard for science. But it used scientifically valid techniques, the team’s research regularly gets published and several outside experts told The Associated Press it makes sense.

The way scientists do these rapid analyses is by comparing observations of current weather in the three regions to repeated computer simulations of “a world that might have been without climate change,” said study co-author Izidine Pinto, a climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

In Europe and North America, the study doesn’t claim human-caused climate change is the sole cause of the heat waves, but it is a necessary ingredient because natural causes and random chance couldn’t produce this alone.

Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said the study was reasonable, but looks at a broad area of the U.S. Southwest, so it may not be applicable to every single place in the area.

“In the United States, it’s clear that the entire southern tier is going to see the worst of the ever-worsening heat and this summer should be considered a serious wake-up call,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck.

With heat waves, “the most important thing is that they kill people and they particularly kill and hurt and destroy lives and livelihoods of those most vulnerable,” Otto said.

“For much of July hot dangerous conditions have been the normal in parts of the West, Texas and Florida,” the National Weather Service said in a forecast discussion. “These summer conditions will build and expand across the Eastern two-thirds of the country this week, starting in the north-central states and Plains.“

Federal forecasters have issued excessive heat warnings and heat advisories for a wide swath of the United States, including parts of California, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, the Dakotas, the desert Southwest, Texas, and the southern tip of Florida. 

Three high pressure systems of the type associated with hot weather were expected to move over the interior West, the Midwest and Northeast, and Florida, according to the weather service.

The heat wave’s geographic expansion through at least Wednesday could be dampened by expected thunderstorms in the Mid-Atlantic, the South, and along the Gulf Coast, the weather service said.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com 

Pfizer confirmed that the large manufacturing complex was damaged by a twister that touched down shortly after midday near Rocky Mount, but said in an email that it had no reports of serious injuries. A later company statement said all employees were safely evacuated and accounted for.

Parts of roofs were ripped open atop its massive buildings. The Pfizer plant stores large quantities of medicine that were tossed about, said Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone.

“I’ve got reports of 50,000 pallets of medicine that are strewn across the facility and damaged through the rain and the wind,” Stone said.

The plant produces anesthesia and other drugs as well as nearly 25% of all sterile injectable medications used in U.S. hospitals, Pfizer said on its website. Erin Fox, senior pharmacy director at University of Utah Health, said the damage “will likely lead to long-term shortages while Pfizer works to either move production to other sites or rebuilds.”

The National Weather Service said in a tweet that the damage was consistent with an EF3 tornado with wind speeds up to 150 mph (240 kph).

The Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office, where part of Rocky Mount is located, said on Facebook that they had reports of three people injured in the tornado, and that two of them had life-threatening injuries.

A preliminary report from neighboring Nash County said 13 people were injured and 89 structures were damaged, WRAL-TV reported.

Three homes owned by Brian Varnell and his family members in the nearby Dortches area were damaged. He told the news outlet he is thankful they are all alive. His sister and her children hid in their home’s laundry room.

“They got where they needed to be within the house and it all worked out for the best,” Varnell said near a home that was missing exterior walls and a large chunk of the roof.

Elsewhere in the U.S., an onslaught of searing temperatures and rising floodwaters continued, with Phoenix breaking an all-time temperature record and rescuers pulling people from rain-swamped homes and vehicles in Kentucky.

Forecasters said little relief appears in sight from the heat and storms. For example, Miami has endured a heat index of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) or more for weeks, with temperatures expected to rise this weekend.

In Kentucky, meteorologists warned of a “life-threatening situation” in the communities of Mayfield and Wingo, which were inundated by flash flooding this week from thunderstorms. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency there Wednesday as more storms threatened.

Forecasters expect up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain could yet fall on parts of Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri near where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers converge.

The storm system is forecast to move Thursday and Friday over New England, where the ground remains saturated after recent floods. In Connecticut, a mother and her 5-year-old daughter died after being swept down a swollen river Tuesday. In southeastern Pennsylvania, a search continued for two children caught in flash flooding Saturday night.

Meanwhile, Phoenix broke an all-time record Wednesday morning for a warm low temperature of 97 F (36.1 C), raising the threat of heat-related illness for residents unable to cool off adequately overnight. The previous record was 96 F (35.6 C) in 2003, the weather service reported.

Lindsay LaMont, who works at the Sweet Republic ice cream shop Phoenix, said business had been slow during the day with people sheltering inside to escape the heat. “But I’m definitely seeing a lot more people come in the evening to get their ice cream when things start cooling off,” LaMont said.

Heat-related deaths continue to rise in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located. Public health officials Wednesday reported that six more heat-associated fatalities were confirmed last week, bringing the year’s total so far to 18. All six deaths didn’t necessarily occur last week as some may have happened weeks earlier but were confirmed as heat-related only after a thorough investigation.

By this time last year, there had been 29 confirmed heat-associated deaths in the county and another 193 under investigation.

Phoenix, a desert city of more than 1.6 million people, had set a separate record Tuesday among U.S. cities by marking 19 straight days of temperatures of 110 F (43.3 C) or more. It topped 110 again Wednesday.

National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Hirsh said Phoenix’s 119 F (48.3 C) high Wednesday tied the fourth highest temperature recorded in the city ever. The highest temperature of all time was 122 F (50 C), set in 1990.

Across the country, Miami marked its 16th straight day of heat indexes in excess of 105 F (40.6 C). The previous record was five days in June 2019.

“And it’s only looking to increase as we head into the later part of the week and the weekend,” said Cameron Pine, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

The region has also seen 38 consecutive days with a heat index threshold of 100 F (37.8 C), and sea surface temperatures are reported to be several degrees warmer than normal.

“There really is no immediate relief in sight,” Pine said.

A 71-year-old Los Angeles-area man died at a trailhead in Death Valley National Park in eastern California on Tuesday afternoon as temperatures reached 121 F (49.4 C) or higher and rangers suspect heat was a factor, the National Park Service said in a statement Wednesday.

It is possibly the second heat-related fatality in Death Valley this summer. A 65-year-old man was found dead in a car on July 3.

Human-caused climate change and a newly formed El Nino are combining to shatter heat records worldwide, scientists say.

The entire globe has simmered to record heat both in June and July. Nearly every day this month, the global average temperature has been warmer than the unofficial hottest day recorded before 2023, according to University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer.

Atmospheric scientists say the global warming responsible for unrelenting heat in the Southwest also is making extreme rainfall a more frequent reality.

___

Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. Associated Press reporters Anita Snow in Phoenix, Freida Frisaro in Miami, JoNel Aleccia in Temecula, California, and Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.

As human-caused climate change and a newly formed El Nino are combining to shatter heat records worldwide, the Phoenix region stands apart among major metropolitan areas in the U.S.

No other major city – defined as the 25 most populous in the United States – has had any streak of 110-degree days or 90-degree nights longer than Phoenix, said weather historian Christopher Burt of the Weather Company.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate data scientists Russ Vose and Ken Kunkel found no large cities with that streak of warming, but smaller places such as Death Valley and Needles, California; and Casa Grande, Arizona, have had longer streaks. Death Valley has had an 84-day streak of 110-degree temperatures and a 47-day streak of nighttime temperatures that haven’t fallen below 90, Vose said.

For Phoenix, it’s not only the brutal daytime highs that are deadly. The lack of a nighttime cooldown can rob people without access to air conditioning of the break from the heat that their bodies need to continue to function properly.

With Tuesday’s low of 94, the city has had nine straight days of temperatures that didn’t go below 90 at night, breaking another record there, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Salerno, who called it “pretty miserable when you don’t have any recovery overnight.”

On Monday, the city set a record for the hottest overnight low temperature: 95 (35 degrees Celsius).

Some 200 cooling and hydration centers have been set up across the metro area to cool residents, both most shut down at between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. due to staffing and funding issues.

“Long-term exposure to heat is more difficult to withstand than single hot days, especially if it is not cooling off at night enough to sleep well,” said Katharine Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona.

The last time Phoenix didn’t reach 110 F (43.3 C) was June 29, when it hit 108 (42.2 C). The record of 18 days above 110 that was tied Monday was first set in 1974, and it appeared destined to be shattered with temperatures forecast above that through the end of the week.

“This will likely be one of the most notable periods in our health record in terms of deaths and illness,” said David Hondula, chief heat officer for the City of Phoenix. “Our goal is for that not to be the case.”

Phoenix’s heat wave has both long and short-term causes, said Arizona State University’s Randy Cerveny, who coordinates weather record verification for the World Meteorological Organization.

“The long-term is the continuation of increasing temperatures in recent decades due to human influence on climate, while the short-term cause is the persistence over the last few weeks of a very strong upper level ridge of high pressure over the western United States,” he said.

That high pressure, also known as a heat dome, has been around the Southwest cooking it for weeks, and when it moved it, moved to be even more centered on Phoenix than ever, said National Weather Service meteorologist Isaac Smith.

The Southwest high pressure not only brings the heat, it prevents cooling rain and clouds from bringing relief, Smith said. Normally, the Southwest’s monsoon season kicks in around June 15 with rain and clouds. But Phoenix has not had measurable rain since mid-March.

“Although it is always hot in the summer in Phoenix, this heat wave is intense and unrelenting,” said Jacobs. “Unfortunately, it is a harbinger of things to come given that the most reliable projected impacts of climate change are those that are directly related to the increase in global temperatures.”

In eastern Pennsylvania, authorities described Monday’s search for missing Matilda Sheils, 2, and her 9-month-old brother Conrad Sheils as a “massive undertaking” along a creek that drains into the Delaware River. The children are members of a Charleston, South Carolina, family that was visiting relatives and friends when they got caught in a flash flood Saturday.

The children’s father, Jim Sheils, grabbed their 4-year-old son, while the children’s mother, Katie Seley, and a grandmother grabbed the other children, said Upper Makefield Township Fire Chief Tim Brewer. Sheils and his son made it to safety, Seley and the grandmother were swept away.

The grandmother survived, but Seley, 32, was among five killed by the floods.

“A wall of water came to them; they did not go into the water,” Brewer said of the Sheils family.

Scott Ellis, an uncle to the missing children, described the family as “utterly devastated.”

Monsignor Michael Picard of St. Andrew Roman Catholic Church, where family members are parishioners, said he spoke with the grandparents Sunday.

“No matter how long I’ve been doing this — over and over and over, many, many years — you find yourself still helpless and without words to make people feel more comfortable,” Picard said. “And so you just simply pray with them for a few minutes.”

Pennsylvania’s flash floods also drowned Enzo Depiero, 78, and Linda Depiero, 74, of Newtown; Yuko Love, 64, of Newtown; and Susan Barnhart, 53, of Titusville, New Jersey, according to Bucks County Coroner Meredith Buck.

The county commissioners signed an emergency declaration in response to the severe flooding.

Other parts of the saturated Northeast began drying out Monday after drenching weekend rains resulted in flash flooding in parts of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency Sunday.

The Vermont Emergency Management agency reported that swift-water rescue teams conducted an additional six rescues overnight. The agency also was monitoring areas at risk for landslides.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Gov. Phil Scott on Monday toured some of the destruction from recent torrential rains, including a damaged inn that was cut in half by flood waters.

Buttigieg said Vermont has endured two storms that would be called “once in a century” events in the span of just 12 years.

“We can’t go into the future requiring communities to put everything back exactly the way it was if a 100-year-flood is about to become an annual event,” he said.

More rain was forecast for Tuesday.

Sunday’s strong storms led to hundreds of flight cancellations at airports in the New York City area, and hundreds more flights were delayed.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said 5 inches of rain fell within two hours in Suffolk County on Long Island. The state saw $50 million in damages from storms in the past week.

In North Carolina, floodwaters were blamed for the death of a 49-year-old woman whose car was swept off a road in Alexander County late Saturday night. A man who was in the car with her was rescued.

Meanwhile, extensive swaths of the northern United States awoke to unhealthy air quality Monday morning or were experiencing it by midafternoon, according to the Environmental Protect Agency’s AirNow.gov Smoke and Fire map.

Fine particle pollution caused by smoke from Canada’s wildfires is causing a red zone air quality index, meaning it is unhealthy for everyone. The particles, known as PM2.5, are tiny enough to get deep into the lungs and cause short-term problems like coughing and itchy eyes, and in the long run, can affect the lungs and heart.

The EPA advises keeping outdoor activities light and short when air quality indexes reach above 150 on the agency’s map. On Monday afternoon, cities and regions hitting that mark included Lincoln, Nebraska; Peoria, Illinois; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Cleveland and Columbus in Ohio; Huntsville, Alabama; Knoxville and Chattanooga in Tennessee; Greensboro, North Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Syracuse and Utica in New York.

Sensitive groups, including people with heart and lung disease, older adults, children and pregnant women, should consider staying inside, advisories warn.

Elsewhere in the U.S., thousands of people in Kansas and Missouri were without power from weekend storms that swept those states. Kansas’ largest electric power provider, Evergy, said it could take days to restore service to all customers. The timeline could create difficult conditions for some people as more storms and stifling heat were expected in Kansas and Missouri early this week, according to the National Weather Service.

In the West, a mountain biker died Saturday in blistering desert heat east of San Diego after he and three fellow bikers helped rescue four hikers who were without water.

Cal Fire Capt. Brent Pascua said the bikers called 911 and two rode back to a trailhead to give directions to rescuers. A helicopter hoisted the hikers, and the two bikers that had stayed with them headed to the trailhead. One did not arrive and was found unresponsive about a quarter-mile away. He later died, though there was no information on the cause of death.

Temperatures also soared in Phoenix, which hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday shortly after 12:30 p.m., marking 18 consecutive days the city has hit that temperature and tying an earlier record for consecutive days at or above 110 degrees. Phoenix is expected to surpass the record on Tuesday.

Death Valley, which runs along part of central California’s border with Nevada, reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday at the aptly named Furnace Creek, the National Weather Service said.

Reno, Nevada, set a record high of 108 degrees for the date on Sunday, while also tying the all-time high set on July 10 and 11 of 2002, and equaled on July 5, 2007, the National Weather Service said.

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Associated Press writers Ron Todt in Philadelphia; David Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada; and Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia contributed to this report.

A total of 37 people have died and thousands have been evacuated since July 9, when heavy rain started pounding South Korea’s central regions.

Nearly 900 rescuers including divers were searching the tunnel in the central city of Cheongju, where the vehicles, including a bus, were swamped by a flash flood Saturday evening, Seo Jeong-il, chief of the city’s fire department, said in a briefing.

Fire officials estimated that the tunnel filled with water in as little as two or three minutes.

Photos and video from the scene showed rescue workers establishing a perimeter and pumping brown water out of the tunnel as divers used rubber boats to move in and out of the area.

Yang Chan-mo, an official from the North Chungcheong provincial fire department, said it could take several hours to pump out all the water from the tunnel, which was still filled with 13 to 16.4 feet of water dense with mud and other debris. Workers were proceeding slowly to prevent any victims or survivors from being swept out, Yang said.

Nine survivors were rescued from the tunnel and around 10 others were believed to be missing based on reports by families or others, but the exact number of passengers trapped in vehicles wasn’t immediately clear, Seo said.

More than 23.6 inches of rain was measured in the South Chungcheong provincial towns of Gongju and Cheongyang since July 9. Cheongju, where the tunnel is located, received more than 21.2 inches during the same period.

The Korea Meteorological Administration said the central and southern parts of the country could still get as much as 12 inches of additional rain through Tuesday.

More than 8,850 people have been evacuated and 27,260 households had been without electricity in the past several days. The rain damaged or destroyed nearly 50 roads and more than a 100 homes, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said. At least 35 people were treated for injuries.

President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is on a trip to Europe, discussed the rain-related casualties and damages during an emergency meeting while traveling to Poland on a train after visiting Ukraine on Saturday, according to his office. Yoon called for officials to mobilize all available resources to respond to the disaster.

Mike Cannon of Vermont Urban Search and Rescue said crews from North Carolina, Michigan and Connecticut were among those helping to get to towns that have been unreachable since torrents of rain belted the state. The towns of Londonderry and Weston were inaccessible, Cannon said, and rescuers were heading there to do welfare checks. Water levels at several dams were being closely monitored.

Flooding hit Vermont’s state capital, with Montpelier Town Manager Bill Fraser estimating Monday night that knee-high waters had reached much of downtown and were expected to rise a couple more feet during the night. Montpelier had largely been spared during Tropical Storm Irene, which struck the region in 2011.

“For us, this is far worse than Irene. We got water but it went up and down. There were some basements flooded but it didn’t last long,” Fraser said, comparing this flooding to the Montpelier Ice Jams in 1992. “We are completely inundated. The water is way, way higher than it ever got during Irene.”

During Irene, Vermont got 11 inches (28 centimeters) of rain in 24 hours. Irene killed six in the state, washed homes off their foundations and damaged or destroyed more than 200 bridges and 500 miles (805 kilometers) of highway.

There have been no reports of injuries or deaths related to the latest flooding in Vermont, according to state emergency officials. Roads were closed across the state, including many along the spine of the Green Mountains.

Some people canoed their way to the Cavendish Baptist Church in Vermont, which had turned into a shelter. About 30 people waited it out, some of them making cookies for firefighters who were working to evacuate and rescue others.

“People are doing OK. It’s just stressful,” shelter volunteer Amanda Gross said.

Vermont Rep. Kelly Pajala said she and about half dozen others had to evacuate early Monday from a four-unit apartment building on the West River in Londonderry.

“The river was at our doorstep,” said Pajala. “We threw some dry clothes and our cats into the car and drove to higher ground.”

The slow-moving storm reached New England in the morning after hitting parts of New York and Connecticut on Sunday. Additional downpours in the region raised the potential for flash flooding; rainfall in certain parts of Vermont had exceeded 7 inches ( 18 centimeters), the National Weather Service in Burlington said.

One of the worst-hit places was New York’s Hudson Valley, where a woman identified by police as Pamela Nugent, 43, died as she tried to escape her flooded home in the hamlet of Fort Montgomery.

The force of the flash flooding dislodged boulders, which rammed into the woman’s house and damaged part of its wall, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus told The Associated Press. Two other people escaped.

“She was trying to get through (the flooding) with her dog,” Neuhaus said, “and she was overwhelmed by tidal wave-type waves.”

Officials say the storm has already wrought tens of millions of dollars in damage. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference Monday the storm sent “cars swirling in our streets” and dumped a “historic” amount of rain.

“Nine inches of rain in this community,” Hochul said during a briefing on a muddy street in Highland Falls. “They’re calling this a ‘1,000 year event.’”

As of Monday evening, several washed-out streets in Highland Falls remained impassable, leaving some residents stuck in their homes but otherwise OK, Police Chief Frank Basile said in a telephone interview.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said there were reports of flooding in central and western Massachusetts and that state emergency management officials were in touch with local authorities.

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point was pounded with more than 8 inches (20.32 centimeters) of rain that sent debris sliding onto some roads and washed others out. Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steven W. Gilland said recently arrived new cadets and others at the historic academy on the Hudson River were safe, but that assessing the damage will take time.

Atmospheric scientists say destructive flooding events across the globe have this in common: Storms are forming in a warmer atmosphere, making extreme rainfall a reality right now. The additional warming that scientists predict is coming will only make it worse.

The storm also interrupted air and rail travel. There were hundreds of flight cancellations at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports and more than 200 canceled at Boston’s Logan Airport in the last 24 hours, according to the Flightaware website. Amtrak temporarily suspended service between Albany and New York.

Swift water rescue teams in Vermont have done more than 50 rescues, mainly in the southern and central areas of the state, Vermont Emergency Management said Monday night.

Among the buildings flooded Monday was the Weston Playhouse in Weston, Vermont, which had been performing “Buddy — The Buddy Holly Story” to sold-out audiences.

The Weston Theater Company’s executive artistic director Susanna Gellert said the call was made at around 4 a.m. to evacuate 11 people associated with the production to higher ground and another 15 in nearby Ludlow. The three-floor playhouse, which had been damaged during Irene, was also flooded, with the dressing room and props room under water.

“As a theater, we were just starting to get back from the COVID shutdown,” Gellert said. “To have this happen right now is painfully heartbreaking.”

Cara Philbin, 37, of Ludlow, Vermont, was awakened by a neighbor early Monday and told to clear out of her second-floor apartment because the parking lot was already flooded.

“He told me me, ‘You need to get out of here … your car is going to float away, and I suggest you do not stay,’” said Philbin. The neighbor took her car keys and moved her car to a higher spot, while she called her parents and then drove to their home to ride out the storm, she said.

Ross Andrews and his wife were driving back home to Calais, Vermont, on Monday when he saw trucks parked at a 230-year-old dam with crews trying to keep it from failing. There were trees down everywhere.

“The interstate was closed right at our exit. Our road was closed right at our driveway. We managed to thread our way back just in the nick of time,” he said.

___

Minchillo reported from Highland Falls, New York. Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Michael Hill in Albany, New York; and Mark Pratt and Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed.

The man’s body was found around 10 a.m. by a maintenance worker who spotted a car off the side of the road with two flat tires, the National Park Service said in a statement.

The sedan had two flat tires but had not crashed, it said. The air conditioning did not work and the driver’s window was down, suggesting it was not working when the man was driving, according to the agency.

“The initial investigation suggests that heat-related illness may have caused the driver to run off road,” the park service said.

Death Valley is one of the hottest places on Earth. The hottest temperature recorded on Earth was at Furnace Creek in Death Valley in 1913, at 134 degrees, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather & Climate Extremes Archive.

Many of the deaths have occurred on days with double red flags — which are posted at beach entrances and on lifeguard stations — that warn beachgoers of potential rip currents. Seven deaths since mid-June have occurred around Panama City Beach, including ex-NFL quarterback Ryan Mallett, 35, who drowned Tuesday in nearby Destin after getting caught up in a strong rip current. One person drowned June 20 in Orange Beach, Alabama, and another drowned June 23 in nearby Gulf Shores, Alabama.

The Gulf of Mexico’s white sandy beaches are a draw for tourists, and as the busy Fourth of July holiday approaches, officials are hoping beachgoers will take extra precaution.

“I’m beyond frustrated at the situation that we have with tragic and unnecessary deaths in the Gulf,” Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford wrote in a Facebook post, accompanied by an aerial view that shows deep trenches that rip currents dug into the shoreline along Panama City Beach. “I have watched while deputies, firefighters and lifeguards have risked their lives to save strangers. I have seen strangers die trying to save their children and loved ones, including two fathers on Father’s Day.”

Ford says his deputies have been cursed at as they’ve tried to warn visitors of the “life-threatening dangers” in the Gulf of Mexico.

He said deputies have handed out $500 fines when they’ve seen people in the water during double red flag days.

“We don’t have the resources or time to cite every single person that enters the water but we do our absolute best to use it as a deterrent to entering the water,” Ford said, explaining that an arrest is only authorized upon a second offense, unless the person resists law enforcement.

The sheriff notes there is only so much local officials can do, so he’s asking tourists and residents to pay close attention to the flag status at the beach.

“Personal responsibility is the only way to ensure that no one else dies,” he wrote.

That message is echoed by Greg Dusek, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ocean service unit. He said that people can’t always see the deep channels on the shoreline caused by rip currents, or even tell how dangerous conditions are by the weather.

“Waves can happen when there’s a storm where you are, but they can also happen from storms far away,” Dusek said. “It can be a really nice day at the beach, beautiful, not even much wind. But you have swells coming in from storms hundreds of miles away potentially, and those waves are big enough to drive in rip currents.”

Those are the days that officials often see higher numbers of water rescues and drownings.

“That’s why I think one of the big messages needs to be: Understand the flag system for the beach you are going to, and follow that guidance,” he said.

A rip current is a powerful, narrow channel of water flowing away from the beach and often extending through the breaker zone where waves form. They can emerge on sunny days, and can quickly sweep even the strongest swimmer out to sea.

While the popular Shark Week documentaries and the movie “Jaws” may have etched the fear of sharks into many beachgoers, drownings caused by rip currents claim many more lives. For example, in 2022 there were 108 documented shark bites of all types on humans worldwide, according to the International Shark File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Of those, Florida accounted for 16 bites, all nonfatal, among the 41 in the U.S. There was one fatality in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, through June 24, 2023, NOAA statistics show 55 deaths related to rip currents in the U.S. The seven deaths in Panama City Beach came between June 15 and 24.

“Even if there are red flags flying, people look at the water and say, ‘Oh, I’ve been in waves that big before. It doesn’t look that dangerous,’” Dusek said.

“Many times people don’t think about it, and they’re caught off guard by the risk,” he said. “I guess that’s natural human mentality. You get to the beach, you just want to have a good time with your family. You’re not necessarily thinking about what can go wrong.”

In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, 119 people have died from heat-related illnesses over the last several days while in neighboring Bihar state 47 people have died, according to local news reports and health officials.

The largest hospital in Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh is unable to accommodate more patients, officials said, and its morgue was overwhelmed after 54 people died due to the heat. Some families were asked to take the bodies of their relatives home.

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While northern regions of India are known for sweltering heat during the summer months, temperatures have been consistently above normal, according to the Indian Meteorological Department, with highs in recent days reaching 43.5 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit). A heat wave is declared in India if temperatures are at least 4.5 degrees Celsius above normal or if the temperature is above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

“We have been issuing heat wave warnings for the past few days,” said Atul Kumar Singh, a scientist at the IMD.

Despite the warnings, government officials did not ask people to brace for the heat until Sunday, when the death toll began to increase.

Adding to the heat stress are consistent power outages across the region, leaving people with no running water, fans or air conditioners.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the government was taking measures to ensure an uninterrupted power supply in the state. He urged citizens to cooperate with the government and use electricity judiciously.

“Every village and every city should receive adequate power supply during this scorching heat. If any faults occur, they should be promptly addressed,” he said Friday night in a statement.

Inside Ballia district hospital, the chaotic scenes were reminiscent of the coronavirus pandemic, with families and doctors scrambling even as many patients required urgent medical attention. The corridors smelled of urine, garbage and medical waste, and hospital walls were stained with betel leaf spit.

“All our staff has been here for three days straight and are completely overworked,” said Dr. Aditya Singh, an emergency medical officer.

The wards in the hospital had no functioning air conditioners, and cooling units that were installed were not working properly due to power fluctuations. Attendants were fanning patients with books and wiping their sweat in an attempt to keep them cool.

Officials in the district hospital say more severe cases are now being shifted to hospitals in bigger cities nearby such as Varanasi and more doctors and medical resources are being sent to the district hospital to deal with the heat-induced crisis.

Outside, Ballia residents told the AP they were scared of going outside after midmorning.

“So many people are dying from the heat that we are not getting a minute’s time to rest. On Sunday, I carried 26 dead bodies,” Jitendra Kumar Yadav, a hearse driver in Deoria town, 110 kilometers (68 miles) from Ballia, told the AP.

Climate experts say that heat waves will continue and India needs to prepare better to deal with their consequences. A study by World Weather Attribution, an academic group that examines the source of extreme heat, found that a searing heat wave in April that struck parts of South Asia was made at least 30 times more likely by climate change.

“Plans for dealing with heatwaves are essential for minimizing their effects and preserving lives. These plans include all-inclusive approaches to dealing with high heat occurrences, such as public awareness campaigns, the provision of cooling centers, and healthcare assistance,” said Aditya Valiathan Pillai, an associate fellow at a New Delhi-based think-tank, Centre for Policy Research.

___

Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee contributed to this story from Lucknow, India. Associated Press writer Indrajit Singh contributed to this story from Patna, India. Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India.

At least one person in Oklahoma died due to the prolonged outages, officials said.

The bulk of outages were in Oklahoma, where heavy storms Saturday night carried winds as strong as 80 mph around Tulsa, according to the National Weather Service. About 165,000 customers around the city still had no power Monday as crews scrambled to repair more than 700 broken poles and downed wires, said Amy Brown, a spokeswoman for Public Service Company of Oklahoma.

One person who used a respirator died because of the power outage, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said at a city news conference.

Power providers warned that some outages may not be fixed until the end of the week, and Bynum urged residents to keep in mind family and neighbors who are reliant on electronic medical equipment.

“Please check on them,” he said.

In all, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana had more than 300,000 customers without electricity as of Monday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.

In Louisiana, officials closed nearly two dozen state offices Monday because of the risks of severe weather. On top of the outages, a heat wave continued bringing dangerous triple-digit temperatures to Texas, and some parts of the state were under excessive heat warnings that were set to continue through at least Wednesday.

“It’s been unbearable,” Leigh Johnson, a resident of Mount Vernon, Texas, told Dallas television station KXAS. She had not had power for about three days.

“It’s been horrible because it’s like, the heat index has been so bad that literally, we’re having to sit in the cold baths to cool ourselves down. Our animals as well, we’re having to stick them in the bathtub just to keep them from having a heat stroke, it’s been that bad,” she said.

About 4,000 customers were also still waiting for electricity to come back in the Texas town of Perryton after a devastating tornado ripped through last week.

Power outages also extended to Mississippi, where some people had trouble obtaining medication after power forced pharmacies and grocery stores to close, according to WLBT-TV. As crews were working to restore power in Mississippi, multiple tornadoes swept through the state overnight into Monday, killing one and injuring nearly two dozen.

Associated Press writer Michael Goldberg in Jackson, Mississippi contributed to this report.

The threat of tornadoes is rising as the weather conditions that create them are becoming more frequent and widespread due to global warming, experts say. That means a lot of areas that rarely see these storms are now in their paths.

The U.S. experienced six times more billion-dollar severe storms in the past decade than in the previous two decades, according to Climate Central. Those are the storms that produce tornadoes. So far this year, tornadoes have taken at least 58 lives across 10 states, already surpassing the annual average. Much of that is because the season is starting earlier, and tornado alley is expanding due to a warmer climate.

“Northeast Texas, eastern Oklahoma, the Arkansas River Valley, the mid-South, these areas are expected to see a near doubling of storms that produce tornadoes,” said Walker Scott Ashley, professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University.

Tornadoes need four ingredients to form, explained Ashley: moisture, instability (which provides the energy necessary for the storms), wind shear and lift. The first two are expected to increase significantly in a warming climate.

“It makes a lot of sense. If we heat up the oceans, if we heat up the earth’s atmospheric system, we’re going to have more moisture in that system, and that leads to more moisture for the storms, but also greater instability,” Ashley said.

When a powerful F-4 tornado plowed through Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in March, residents were largely unprepared. The area had not seen a tornado in over half a century.

“We didn’t have very many tornadoes. The only one that I can remember is 1971, and the tornado bypassed Rolling Fork. It didn’t actually hit,” said Eldridge Walker, the mayor and a native of Rolling Fork, which has a population of just under 1,800 people.

When the March storm hit, the city had only one tornado siren, and some residents said they didn’t hear it. There are now plans to add two more.

“It’s pretty clear that things are happening, which means as a city, as a community, as a homeowner, that folk need to be serious, a little bit more serious-minded about being prepared,” Walker said.

The difference between tornados coming through typical tornado alley, such as Kansas, and coming through Mississippi, is simply density. The states have almost the same exact populations, but Mississippi is roughly half the size of Kansas.

“There are more things, more people, more of us and more of our possessions in the mid-South,” said Ashely. “You combine that with an extreme socioeconomic vulnerability, and that is increased poverty rates and lack of sheltering and poor, in many cases, substandard housing — the recipe is for disaster across some of these areas.”

 The majority of residents in Rolling Fork had neither homeowners nor renters insurance, according to Walker.

That’s precisely why the widening of tornado alley is fast becoming a new focus for insurers.

“If we continue on the trend that we’re going, that means that these economic losses are going to become in the hundreds of billions of dollars in a calendar quarter,” said John Dickson, president of insurer Aon Edge, a division of Aon. “We need to make sure that we have an infrastructure, we have a capital mechanism, that we have a connected community mechanism to be able to respond to these events.”

But it’s all happening, Dickson said, at a time when insurance dollars are diminishing.

“So, insurance capital becomes a precious finite commodity, prices go up, coverage changes, coverage options begin to be tighter and deductibles go up,” he added.

Global reinsurer capital declined 17%, or $115 billion, to $560 billion during the first nine months of 2022, according to Eric Andersen, president of Aon, in March 2023 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget. As a result, reinsurers are raising prices, limiting coverage and even exiting some markets to improve returns.

Both State Farm and Allstate have stopped writing homeowners insurance in California due to the rising risk of wildfires. In a May release, State Farm said it made the decision “due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure and a challenging reinsurance market.”

Technically, spaghetti models refer to lines on a computer model that show the potential paths of a storm.

During a hurricane warning, meteorologists receive information from 21 possible trajectory models. Those lines, shown together on a map, resemble strands of spaghetti.

“At the meteorological level, the spaghetti models are fundamental to let the audience know both the possible trajectory of a tropical system, as well as the uncertainty involved in the forecast; the closer the lines are together, the more certainty there is about its future position,” said Telemundo Houston lead meteorologist Pablo Sanchez.

The greater the coincidence between the different models about the eventual path of a storm, the clearer the picture about the area through which it could pass.

The spaghetti models are based on different types of data. Some are based on statistical probabilities, others on atmospheric dynamics, and a few on the climatology of the moment and atmospheric conditions.

The Global Forecast System and EURO models analyze the most significant data, including physical and atmospheric equations, as well as information received from land, air and ocean at a specific time.

Even though these computer models attempt to establish trajectories, they are not meant to estimate impact levels, size or other effects of storms.

Meteorologists explain that these models are not 100% accurate and that any change in weather conditions will change the interpretation of what may occur later on.

Roberto Flores, 42, died when the EF1 tornado struck the community of Laguna Heights, located on the mainland across from South Padre Island, said Cameron County Sheriff Eric Garza.

An EF1 tornado has wind speeds of 86-110 mph (138-177 kph), according to the National Weather Service.

“Apparently it went straight through that community,” Garza said, “Individuals don’t want to leave their houses because they’re afraid that somebody will go in there and start stealing stuff.”

Garza said his the sheriff’s department is helping provide security for the area.

At least 10 people were also hospitalized — two in critical condition — and multiple people suffered cuts and bruises, said Tom Hushen, the emergency management coordinator for Cameron County. The tornado hit at about 4 a.m.

Hushen said the tornado “caused significant damage to residences … we have 40-60 damaged homes,” some heavily damaged.

The Texas tornado follows an outbreak of dozens of twisters in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado that caused damage but no reported deaths.

Laguna Heights is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of the U.S.-Mexico border at Brownsville and is not prone to tornado active, although this spring has been active, said weather service meteorologist Angelica Soria. Weather service radar observed rotation in the storm, she said, which prompted a tornado warning.

“We did have a tornado warning just north of this area a couple of weeks ago,” Soria added, “but we were not able to confirm that tornado, even though it was radar indicated.”

___

Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas, and Miller reported from Oklahoma City.

Fort Lauderdale issued a state of emergency as flooding persisted in parts of the city. Emergency crews had worked through the night to attend rescue calls, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.

Stranded cars littered streets around eastern Broward County, where rains started Monday, with the heaviest downpours coming Wednesday afternoon and evening. Crews worked to clear drains and fire up pumps to clear standing water. People were told to stay off roads until it drained.

The Red Cross arrived at 5 a.m. Thursday and set up a staging area to help residents whose homes were flooded, providing them with blankets and coffee, officials said. The staging area also acted as a reunification point for families.

Fort Lauderdale City Hall remained closed Thursday with ground-floor flooding and no power.

More showers, thunderstorms and local flooding were in the forecast from the National Weather Service on Thursday morning. An additional 2 to 4 inches of rain was possible on top of the 14 inches that fell in recent days.

Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport remained closed through at least noon Thursday, with many flights canceled and some passengers stranded. Roads around the airport flooded and became congested with stalled traffic.

By early Thursday, enough water had drained to allow people to drive on the upper level — or departures — road to pick up waiting passengers. But the entrance to the lower-level, or arrivals, road remained closed, officials tweeted.

Video taken by witnesses showed water coming in the door at an airport terminal and a virtual river rushing down the tarmac between planes.

In downtown Fort Lauderdale, video showed a man swimming to the curb along Broward Boulevard on Wednesday afternoon as as cars rolled by. Drivers also recorded themselves rolling through streets where brown, swirling water rose nearly to car hoods.

Broward County schools canceled classes Thursday, including after-school and extracurricular activities.

“We had schools experiencing severe flooding,” Toni Barnes, Broward Schools director of emergency management, told WPLG-TV. “The water made its way into the hallways, into the classrooms. … The schools became inaccessible to parents, parents attempting to pick up their students. Staff members attempting to leave campuses — they were unable — they were trapped in their cars. We had to call fire rescue to assist our parents out of their cars to get them into the school because they were trapped.”

The heavy rains also shut down South Florida’s high-speed commuter rail service, called Brightline. It tweeted Wednesday evening that train service between Miami and Fort Lauderdale was suspended.

___

Associated Press reporter Kathy McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

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Even though 2022 wasn’t near record hot for the United States, it was the third wildest year nationally both in number of extremes that cost $1 billion and overall damage from those weather catastrophes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report issued at the American Meteorological Society’s conference.

The amount, cost and death toll of billion-dollar weather disasters make up a key measurement, adjusted for inflation, that NOAA uses to see how bad human-caused climate change is getting. They led to at least 474 deaths.

“People are seeing the impacts of a changing climate system where they live, work and play on a regular basis,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said at a Tuesday press conference. “With a changing climate buckle up. More extreme events are expected.”

Hurricane Ian, the costliest drought in a decade and a pre-Christmas winter storm pushed last year’s damages to the highest since 2017. The only more expensive years were 2017 — when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria struck — and the disastrous 2005 when numerous hurricanes, headlined by Katrina, pummeled the Southeast, federal meteorologists said. The only busier years for billion-dollar disasters were 2020 and 2021.

Ian was the third costliest U.S. hurricane on record with $112.9 billion in damage, followed by $22.2 billion in damage from a western and midwestern drought that halted barge traffic on the Mississippi River, officials said. The $165 billion total for 2022 doesn’t even include a total yet for the winter storm three weeks ago, which could push it close to $170 billion, officials said.

More than 40% of the continental United States was under official drought conditions for 119 straight weeks, a record in the 22 years of the federal drought monitor, easily passing the old mark of 68 straight weeks, Spinrad said. The country peaked at 63% of the nation in drought in 2022. Spinrad said he expects the atmospheric river pouring rain on California to provide some relief, but not a lot.

“Climate change is supercharging many of these extremes that can lead to billion-dollar disasters,” said NOAA applied climatologist and economist Adam Smith, who calculates the disasters, updating them to factor out inflation. He said more people are also building in harm’s way, along pricey coasts and rivers, and lack of strong construction standards is also an issue. With a good chunk of development beachside, real estate inflation could be a small localized factor, he said.

“The United States has some of the consistently most diverse and intense weather and climate extremes that you’ll see in many parts of the world. And we have a large population that’s vulnerable to these extremes,” Smith told The Associated Press. “So it’s really an imbalance right now.”

Climate change is a hard to ignore factor in extremes, from deadly heat to droughts and flooding, Smith and other officials said.

“The risk of extreme events is growing and they are affecting every corner of the world,” NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick said.

The problem is especially bad when it comes to dangerous heat, said NOAA climate scientist Stephanie Herring, who edits an annual study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that calculates how much of the extreme weather in past years were worsened by climate change.

“Research is showing that these extreme heat events are also likely to become the new normal,” Herring said at the weather conference.

There’s been a dramatic upswing in the size and number of super costly extremes in the U.S. since about 2016, Smith said. In the past seven years, 121 different billion-dollar weather disasters have caused more than $1 trillion in damage and killed more than 5,000 people.

Those years dwarf what happened in the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s. For example, in the entire decade of the 1990s there were 55 different billion-dollar disasters that cost $313 billion total and claimed 3,062 lives.

“It’s not just one but many, many different types of extremes across much of the country,” Smith said. “If extremes were on a bingo card, we almost filled up the card over the last several years.”

In 2022, there were nine billion-dollar non-tropical storms, including a derecho, three hurricanes, two tornado outbreaks, one flood, one winter storm, a megadrought and a costly wildfires. The only general type of weather disaster missing was an icy freeze that causes $1 billion or more in crop damage, Smith said. And last month, Florida came close to it, but missed it by a degree or two and some preventive steps by farmers, he said.

That prevented freeze was one of two “silver linings” in 2022 extremes, Smith said. The other was that the wildfire season, though still costing well over $1 billion, wasn’t as severe as past years, except in New Mexico and Texas, he said.

For the first 11 months of 2022, California was going through its second driest year on record, but drenchings from an atmospheric river that started in December, turned it to only the ninth driest year on record for California, said NOAA climate monitoring chief Karin Gleason.

With a third straight year of a La Nina cooling the eastern Pacific, which tends to change weather patterns across the globe and moderate global warming, 2022 was only the 18th warmest year in U.S. records, Gleason said.

“It was a warm year certainly above average for most of the country but nothing off the charts,” Gleason said. The nation’s average temperature was 53.4 degrees (11.9 degrees Celsius), which is 1.4 degrees (0.8 degrees) warmer than the 20th century average.

The year was 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) below normal for rain and snow, the 27th driest out of 128 years, Gleason said.

NOAA and NASA on Thursday will announce how hot the globe was for 2022, which won’t be a record but likely to be in the top seven or so hottest years. European climate monitoring group Copernicus released its calculations Tuesday, saying 2022 was the fifth hottest globally and second hottest in Europe.

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — which is what traps heat to cause global warming — rose 1.3% in 2022, according to a report released Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, a think tank. That’s less than the economy grew. The emissions increase was driven by cars, trucks and industry with electric power generation polluting slightly less.

It’s the second straight year, both after lockdowns eased, that American carbon pollution has grown after fairly steady decreases for several years. It makes it less likely that the United States will achieve its pledge to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, according to the Rhodium report.

Along with the Thruway, Hochul said I-290, I-190 (Niagara County section and Erie County section north of I-290), I-990, state Routes 400 and 219 had fully reopened following one of the most consequential snowstorms in state history. The Buffalo airport is set to reopen at 11 a.m. Wednesday.

Work remains to be done on the remaining Erie County sections of I-190 and State Routes 5, 33, and 198, with the Democratic governor saying those should reopen by Wednesday if not sooner. All border crossings, including the Peace Bridge, Rainbow Bridge and the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, have been reopened. Some traffic changes around the Thruway remain in effect. See full details on the latest detours and closures, as well as reopenings, here.

“With today’s reopening of major highways across Western New York, we are finally turning the corner on this once-in-a-generation storm,” Hochul said in a statement. “That doesn’t mean we can let our guards down, as it will take many more days for the region to dig out. But this is still good news and I urge motorists to drive carefully and cautiously, follow the rules of the road and be safe behind the wheel.”

The once-in-a-century blizzard began Thursday and continues to impact Western New York, the Finger Lakes and North Country regions, where the storm brought blizzard-like conditions, sustained wind gusts of more than 60 miles per hour, and well-below-freezing temperatures through the holiday weekend. It was one of the worst weather-related disasters ever, and it will likely take some time to calculate the full toll. 

President Joe Biden approved Hochul’s request for a federal emergency declaration in Erie and Genesee counties Monday night, expediting federal assistance to support the state’s ongoing recovery and response operations. A state of emergency, which Hochul declared in advance of the storm, remains in place, the governor said Tuesday.

And the snow threat apparently isn’t over.

Another two inches of snow fell Tuesday in Erie County, which includes Buffalo, the second-largest city in New York, with about 275,000 residents. It is still counting its dead.

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Mayor Byron Brown’s office announced more storm-related deaths Tuesday, bringing Buffalo’s total to 31, along with additional suburban fatalities. The toll surpasses that of the historic Blizzard of 1977, blamed for killing as many as 29 people in a region known for harsh winter weather.

Nationwide, the death toll has surpassed five dozen and continues to rise.

Stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the Mexican border, the storm had killed at least 63 people as of Monday morning, according to an NBC News tally. The deaths were recorded in 12 states: Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin. 

Restaurant owner Kevin Hoak said the storm started building icicles on the building Friday, and the ice just kept building throughout the storm.

“So it started on Friday. I’d say probably around 8, 9 in the morning and it was Sundowner winds splashing against the restaurant, against the foundation and eventually it froze over because it was so cold because it went from like 45 degrees to about 12 degrees,” Hoak said.

Just south of Buffalo, Hamburg and the entire western New York region has been one of the hardest hit areas from the massive winter storm that swept across much of the country in the last week.

“As you can see, it actually protected the restaurant by dropping so low in temperature, because it is acting as a barrier and protecting the restaurant foundation,” he said.

Hoak says it is too early to tell what damage the ice has caused to the building, which has been run by the Hoak family since it opened in 1949.

“I guess we won’t know (about damages to restaurant) until it melts. It’s pretty heavy. That’s what I’m nervous about. But nothing broke. No windows broke. No leaks. And we have just had new floor put in and none of that was touched. So right now we’re good, the only problem is the parking lot got beat up pretty bad.”

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The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.

Travelers’ weather woes are likely to continue, with hundreds of flight cancellations already and more expected after a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow. Some 1,707 domestic and international flights were canceled on Sunday as of about 2 p.m. EDT, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions, paralyzing emergency response efforts. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded Saturday. Officials said the airport would be shut through Tuesday morning. The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 43 inches (109 centimeters) at 7 a.m. Sunday.

Daylight revealed cars nearly covered by 6-foot snowdrifts and thousands of houses, some adorned in unlit holiday displays, dark from a lack of power. With snow swirling down untouched and impassable streets, forecasters warned that an additional 1 to 2 feet of snow was possible in some areas through early Monday morning amid wind gusts of 40 mph.

Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, and another died in Buffalo. Four more deaths were confirmed overnight, bringing the total to seven in Erie County. County Executive Mark Poloncarz warned there may be more dead.

“Some were found in cars, some were found on the street in snowbanks,” said Poloncarz. “We know there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than 2 days.”

Freezing conditions and day-old power outages had Buffalonians scrambling to get to anywhere that had heat amid what Hochul called the longest sustained blizzard conditions ever in the city. But with streets under a thick blanket of white, that wasn’t an option for people like Jeremy Manahan, who charged his phone in his parked car after almost 29 hours without electricity.

“There’s one warming shelter, but that would be too far for me to get to. I can’t drive, obviously, because I’m stuck,” Manahan said. “And you can’t be outside for more than 10 minutes without getting frostbit.”

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Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running, buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.

By 4 a.m. Saturday, their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, following his footprints through drifts.

“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” Ilunga recalled thinking. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life.”

The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle. But heat and lights were steadily being restored across the U.S. According to poweroutage.us, less than 200,000 customers were without power Sunday at 3 p.m. EDT — down from a peak of 1.7 million.

Concerns about rolling blackouts across eastern states subsided Sunday after PJM Interconnection said its utilities could meet the day’s peak electricity demand. The mid-Atlantic grid operator had called for its 65 million consumers to conserve energy amid the freeze Saturday.

In North Carolina, less than 6,500 customers had no power — down from a peak of 485,000. Across New England, power has been restored to tens of thousands with just under 83,000 people, mostly in Maine, still without it. In New York, about 34,000 households were still without power Sunday, including 26,000 in Erie County, where utility crews and hundreds of National Guard troops battled high winds and struggled with getting stuck in the snow.

Storm-related deaths were reported in recent days all over the country: 12 in Erie County, New York, ranging in age from 26 to 93 years old, and another in Niagara County where a 27-year-old man was overcome by carbon monoxide after snow blocked his furnace; 10 in Ohio, including an electrocuted utility worker and those killed in multiple car crashes; six motorists killed in crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky; a Vermont woman struck by a falling branch; an apparently homeless man found amid Colorado’s subzero temperatures; and a woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.

In Jackson, Mississippi, city officials on Christmas Day announced that residents must now boil their drinking water due to water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures While in Tampa, Florida, the thermometer plunged below freezing for the first time in almost five years, according to the National Weather Service — a drop conducive to cold-blooded iguanas falling out of trees.

In Buffalo, William Kless was up at 3 a.m. Sunday. He called his three children at their mother’s house to wish them Merry Christmas and then headed off on his snowmobile for a second day spent shuttling people from stuck cars and frigid homes to a church operating as a warming shelter.

Through heavy, wind-driven snow, he brought about 15 people to the church in Buffalo on Saturday, he said, including a family of five transported one-by-one. He also got a man in need of dialysis, who had spent 17 hours stranded in his car, back home, where he could receive treatment.

“I just felt like I had to,” Kless said

___

Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Associated Press journalist Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles; Jonathan Mattise in Charleston, West Virginia; Ron Todt in Philadelphia; John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; and Wilson Ring in Stowe, Vermont, contributed to this report.

By Sunday evening, Roslyn had winds of 35 mph (55 kph), down from its peak of 130 mph. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Roslyn was about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east-southeast of the northern city of Torreon.

The hurricane was moving northeast at 21 miles per hour (33 kph) and was expected to lose strength further as it moves inland. The center expects Roslyn would dissipate before reaching Texas.

Local media reported two people died after taking shelter in unstable structures that collapsed during the storm, but the Nayarit state civil defense office said it could not confirm those deaths.

While it missed a direct hit, Roslyn brought heavy rain and high waves to Puerto Vallarta, where ocean surges lashed the beachside promenade.

Roslyn came ashore in Nayarit state, in roughly the same area where Hurricane Orlene made landfall Oct. 3.

The hurricane made landfall around the village of Santa Cruz, near the fishing village of San Blas, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) north of Puerto Vallarta.

José Antonio Barajas, the mayor of San Blas, said in a video broadcast that some houses had been damaged and power was knocked out, but nobody was killed or seriously injured.

“The winds from this hurricane were, in truth, tremendous,” Barajas said. “The sound of the wind was strong.”

In Tepic, the Nayarit state capital, Roslyn blew down trees and flooded some streets; authorities asked residents to avoid going out Sunday, as crews worked to clear a landslide that had blocked a local highway.

The Federal Electricity Commission reported that over 150,000 homes had lost power as a result of the storm, and that by midday Sunday, service had been restored to about one-third of those customers.

Meanwhile, beachside eateries in Puerto Vallarta where tourists had lunched unconcerned Saturday were abandoned Sunday morning, and at some the waves had carried away railings and small thatched structures that normally keep the sun off diners.

The head of the state civil defense office for the Puerto Vallarta area, Adrián Bobadilla, said authorities were patrolling the area, but had not yet seen any major damage.

“The biggest effect was from the waves, on some of the beachside infrastructure,” said Bobadilla. “We did not have any significant damage.”

The state civil defense office posted video of officers escorting a large sea turtle back to the water, after it had been thrown up on the beach by the large waves.

The National Water Commission said rains from Roslyn could cause mudslides and flooding and the U.S. hurricane center warned that heavy rains could cause flash flooding and landslides over the rugged terrain inland.

The ship, which archaeologists believe to be a ferry that sunk in the late 1800s to early 1900s, was spotted by a Baton Rouge resident walking along the shore earlier this month. The discovery is the latest to surface from ebbing waters caused by drought. During the summer, receding waters in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area revealed several skeletal remains, countless desiccated fish, a graveyard of forgotten boats and even a sunken World War II-era craft that once surveyed the lake.

“Eventually the river will come back up and (the ship) will go back underwater,” said Chip McGimsey, the Louisiana state archeologist, who has been surveying the wreck during the past two weeks. “That’s part of the reason for making the big effort to document it this time — cause she may not be there the next time.”

McGimsey believes that the ship may be the Brookhill Ferry, which likely carried people and horse-drawn wagons from one-side of the river to the other — before major bridges spanned the mighty Mississippi. Newspaper archives indicate that the ship sank in 1915 during a major storm.

But this is not the first time the low water levels have revealed the ship. McGimsey said that tiny parts of the vessel were exposed in 1990s.

“At that time the vessel was completely full of mud and there was mud all around it so only the very tip tops of the sides were visible, so (archaeologists) really didn’t see much other. They had to move a lot of dirt just to get some narrow windows in to see bits and pieces,” McGimsey said.

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Today one-third of the boat, measuring 95-feet (29-meters) long, is visible on the muddy shoreline near downtown Baton Rouge.

McGimsey expects more discoveries as water levels continue to fall, having already received calls about two more possible shipwrecks.

But the unusually low water level in the lower Mississippi River, where there has been below-normal rainfall since late August, has also led to chaos — causing barges to get stuck in mud and sand, leading to waterway restrictions from the Coast Guard and disrupting river travel for shippers, recreational boaters and passengers on a cruise line.

In Baton Rouge the river rests at about 5-feet (1.5-meters) deep, according to the National Weather Service — its lowest level since 2012.

Water levels are projected to drop even further in the weeks ahead, dampening the region’s economic activity and potentially threatening jobs.

With damage from Ian estimated at several times that and the Fort Myers area beginning a cleanup that will be even larger than after Michael, the two areas are collaborating on a way forward as south Florida residents wonder what their area will look like in a few years.

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Mayor Greg Brudnicki and other leaders from a rebuilt Panama City traveled to the southwestern coast this week at the request of Gov. Ron DeSantis to help officials plan a way forward. Keeping crews and trucks in the area to remove mountains of debris is job No. 1 because all other progress hinges on that, Brudnicki said, and that can mean obtaining loans as a bridge until federal reimbursement money shows up.

“You can’t fix anything until you get it cleaned up,” Brudnicki said.

Tiny Mexico Beach, which was nearly leveled by Michael in 2018, still has fewer structures and people than it did before the storm. The town’s mayor, Al Cathey, said one of the biggest challenges recovering from a natural disaster is fundamental: looking ahead, not back.

With little left in town after Michael, Cathey said, residents gathered daily at a portable kitchen to map out the way forward after the hurricane, and there was an unwritten rule.

“When we had our afternoon meetings at the food truck, all we talked about is, ‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’ — not what didn’t get done four days ago,” Cathey said.

Michael was blamed for more than 30 deaths. With more than 100 fatalities, Ian was the third-deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland this century behind Hurricane Katrina, which left about 1,400 people dead, and Hurricane Sandy, which killed 233 despite weakening to a tropical storm just before landfall.

Recovery will be more complicated in southwest Florida than it was in the Panhandle because of population, Cathey said. Bay County, which includes Panama City and Mexico Beach, has only 180,000 residents, while Lee County, where the Fort Myers area is located, is home to almost 790,000 people, many of whom are retirees.

Simply removing the boats that were thrown onto land around Lee County could take months, and there are the remains of homes and businesses scattered by 155 mph (250 kph) winds or flooded by seawater that surged miles inland along creeks and canals.

One of the damaged vessels and waterlogged homes belongs to Mike Ford, who is braced for a prolonged recovery that could change the character of the area.

The flooded-out mobile home park where Ford lives — one of hundreds of such communities in the region — would be better off as an RV park where people can come and go than as a permanent neighborhood, he said. Residents might be ripe for a buyout or conversion after Ian, particularly since he and others had to repair damage after Hurricane Irma in 2017.

“I’ve got enough money to rebuild, but I can’t see it because what I’ve (already) done is rebuild, and now this happened,” said Ford, who lost a valuable collection of guitars and Beatles records to Ian. “It kind of takes the wind out of you.”

A neighbor of Ford’s, Chuck Wagner, said some people already are getting frustrated after Ian. Many southwest Florida residents are retirees who only live in the area half the year, spending the hot summers in the north, and they’re hearing that aid might not be available to part-time residents.

“Everything is up in the air,” he said. “It might take years. Who knows?”

Progress is measured in incremental steps. Over the weekend, officials announced that power had been restored to the first few homes on Fort Myers Beach, one of the hardest hit places. As of Sunday, FEMA had approved $420 million statewide for lodging and home repair assistance for residents unable to live in their homes following Ian.

In Mexico Beach, Tom Wood, 82, is proof that progress will happen — slowly and painfully.

His beachfront business, the Driftwood Inn, was blown apart and filled with ocean water when Michael made landfall with sustained winds of 160 mph (258 kph) on Oct. 10, 2018. Initially, he said, the only logical step seemed to be giving up.

But the storm passed and the Gulf still beckoned, Wood said, so he decided to rebuild. The new Driftwood Inn reopened in June with 24 rooms at its original location after a $13 million outlay and a lot headaches from insurance, government regulations and contractors.

Mexico Beach still desperately needs a grocery store to avoid the more than 10-mile (16-kilometer) drive to the nearest one, he said, and a pharmacy and more restaurants would be good. But looking back, Wood said, he believes he made the right decision to rebuild and hopes people in Fort Myers Beach do the same.

“I am so glad that we did it, not only us but for the town,” he said. “It just makes the town better, I think.”

The remnants of Ian persist. The storm doused Virginia with rain Sunday, and officials warned of the potential for severe flooding along its coast, beginning overnight Monday.

At least 87 people have been confirmed dead: 83 in Florida, and four in North Carolina, according to NBC News.

All images courtesy of 2022 Maxar Technologies.

More than 1,600 people have been rescued statewide, according to Florida’s emergency management agency.

Rescue missions are ongoing, especially to Florida’s barrier islands, which were cut off from the mainland when storm surges destroyed causeways and bridges.

Coast Guard, municipal and private crews have been using helicopters, boats and even jetskis to evacuate people over the past several days.

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Fiona transformed from a hurricane into a post-tropical storm late Friday, but it still had hurricane-strength winds and brought drenching rains and huge waves. There was no confirmation of fatalities or injuries.

Ocean waves pounded the town of Channel-Port Aux Basques on the southern coast of Newfoundland, where entire structures were washed into the sea. Mayor Brian Button said Saturday over social media that people were being evacuated to high ground as winds knocked down power lines.

“I’m seeing homes in the ocean. I’m seeing rubble floating all over the place. It’s complete and utter destruction. There’s an apartment that is gone,” René J. Roy, a resident of Channel-Port Aux Basques and chief editor at Wreckhouse Press, said in a phone interview.

Roy estimated between eight to 12 houses and buildings have washed into the sea. “It’s quite terrifying,” he said.

Jolene Garland, a spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Newfoundland and Labrador, said a woman was safe and in “good health” after being “tossed into the water as her home collapsed” in the Channel-Port Aux Basques area. Garland said that an individual who might have been swept away was still reported as missing and that high winds were preventing an aerial search.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the town of 4,000 people was in a state of emergency as authorities dealt with multiple electrical fires and residential flooding.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau canceled his trip to Japan for the funeral for assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Trudeau said the federal government would deploy the Canadian Armed Forces to assist.

“We are seeing devastating images coming out of Port aux Basques. PEI (Prince Edward Island) has experienced storm damage like they’ve never seen. Cape Breton is being hit hard, too,” Trudeau said.

“Canadians are thinking of all those affected by Hurricane Fiona, which is having devastating effects in the Atlantic provinces and eastern Quebec, particularly in the Magdalen Islands. There are people who see their houses destroyed, people who are very worried — we will be there for you.”

Halifax Mayor Mike Savage said the roof of an apartment building collapsed and they moved 100 people to an evacuation center. He said no one was seriously hurt or killed. Provincial officials said there are other apartment buildings that are also significantly damaged. Halifax has about 160 people displaced from two apartments, officials said.

More than 415,000 Nova Scotia Power customers — about 80% of the province of almost 1 million — were affected by outages Saturday morning. Over 82,000 customers in the province of Prince Edward Island, about 95%, were also without power, while NB Power in New Brunswick reported 44,329 were without electricity.

The Canadian Hurricane Centre tweeted early Saturday that Fiona had the lowest pressure ever recorded for a storm making landfall in Canada. Forecasters had warned it could be the one of the most powerful storms to hit the country.

“We’re getting more severe storms more frequently,” Trudeau said Saturday.

He said more resilient infrastructure is needed to be able withstand extreme weather events, saying a one in a 100 year storm might start to hit every few years because of climate change.

“Things are only getting worse,” Trudeau said.

A state of local emergency was also declared by the mayor and council of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.

“There are homes that have been significantly damaged due to downed trees, big old trees falling down and causing significant damage. We’re also seeing houses that their roofs have completely torn off, windows breaking in. There is a huge amount of debris in the roadways,” Amanda McDougall, mayor of Cape Breton Regional Municipality, told The Associated Press

“There is a lot of damage to belongings and structures but no injuries to people as of this point. Again we’re still in the midst of this,” she said. “It’s still terrifying. I’m just sitting here in my living room and it feels like the patio doors are going to break in with those big gusts.”

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said roads were washed out, including his own, and said an “incredible” amount of trees were down.

“It is pretty devastating. The sad reality is the people who need information are unable to hear it. Their phones are not working, they don’t have power or access to the internet,” Houston said.

Peter Gregg, President and CEO of Nova Scotia Power, said unprecedented peak winds caused severe damage. “In many areas, weather conditions are still too dangerous for our crews to get up in our bucket trucks,” Gregg said. He said about 380,000 customers remain without power as of Saturday afternoon.

Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King said they had no reports of any significant injuries or deaths. But he said few communities were spared damage, with the devastation looking to be beyond anything they had seen previously in the province. He said over 95% of islanders remained without power.

Federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair said there was very extensive damage at the airport in Sydney, Nova Scotia. He said other airports also were hit, but that damage at the Halifax facility, Nova Scotia’s largest airport, was minor.

Fiona had weakened to tropical storm strength late Saturday afternoon as it moved across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In its final report on Fiona, the U.S. hurricane center said it had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph). It was centered about 80 miles (130 kilomters) northwest of Port aux Basques and moving northeast at 8 mph (13 kph).

Tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 550 miles (890 kilometers).

Hurricanes in Canada are somewhat rare, in part because once the storms reach colder waters, they lose their main source of energy. But post-tropical cyclones still can have hurricane-strength winds, although they have a cold core and no visible eye. They also often lose their symmetric form and more resemble a comma.

In Sydney, Nova Scotia, the largest city in Cape Breton, about 20 people took refuge at the Centre 200 sports and entertainment facility, said Christina Lamey, a spokeswoman for the region. Lamey said there were hundreds of people displaced in the province.

Arlene and Robert Grafilo fled to Centre 200 with their children, ages 3 and 10, after a huge tree fell on their duplex apartment.

“We were trapped and we couldn’t open the doors and the windows, so that’s when we decided to call 911,” Arlene Grafilo said. She said firefighters eventually rescued them.

Peter MacKay, a former foreign minister and defense minister who lives in Nova Scotia, said he and his family had a long night and said the winds were still raging in the afternoon.

“We had put everything we could out of harm’s way, but the house got hammered pretty hard. Lost lots of shingles, heavy water damage in ceilings, walls, our deck is destroyed. A garage that I was building blew away,” MacKay said in an email to The Associated Press.

“Never seen anything like it. Lived through some crazy weather,” he added.

He called the images from Newfoundland heartbreaking.

Fiona so far has been blamed for at least five deaths — two in Puerto Rico, two in the Dominican Republic and one in the French island of Guadeloupe.

In the Caribbean, Tropical Storm Ian was predicted to rapidly strengthen in the coming days. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it could move over western Cuba and toward the west coast of Florida or the Florida Panhandle by the middle of next week.

Ian was centered about 685 miles (1,105 kilometers) southeast of the western tip of Cuba, late Saturday. It had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph) and was moving west at 13 mph (20 kph). A hurricane watch was issued for the Cayman Islands.

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Associated Press writer Morgan Lee in Ventura, California, contributed to this report.