Free Republic

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been hit by biblical flooding after the country's king prayed for rain. King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud had called on the locals of Saudi Arabia to pray for rain earlier this week. Due to a lack of rain in recent months, the King, who is also the custodian of the two holy mosques, told his people to “supplicate Allah almighty” and ask for “forgiveness and repentance”. He also told them to do “good deeds and give charity” all while praying for rainfall. The official decree came from the Royal Court on Tuesday (November,...

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) -- Move over Seattle! According to the National Weather Service, Seattle got less rain between July and October than Arizona did! National Weather Service Seattle released a graphic comparing the total precipitation numbers among different cities across the U.S. The city with the most rainfall totals was Juneau, Alaska, coming in at almost 30 inches! Phoenix marked almost 2 inches of rain, trumping Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles! The NWS Seattle posted a full analysis on their Twitter page. Seattle, sometimes called “Rain City,” is no stranger to various kinds of precipitation,...

FORT MYERS, Fla. – A man and his cat rode out the fury of Hurricane Ian last week in his sailboat, which was his home before the storm. Ian was a monstrous Category 4 hurricane with 150-mph winds when it slammed into Southwest Florida on Sept. 28. The terrible winds pushed ashore feet of water from the Gulf of Mexico as it made landfall. Widespread destruction was left behind. Ron Latta, of Fort Myers, said he had been living in his 32-foot boat named "Lattatude" for four years, and decided to stay with his home. "You don’t leave your boat,"...

Airforce is finding Hurricane Strength winds in the center of Ian.

We had rain today. It was beautiful. When was the last time you intentionally stayed out in the rain to get wet? I spent an hour laying in this hammock in a deluge of rain we have not had for a while.

Heavy rains caused widespread flooding and destruction in eastern Kentucky on Thursday, July 28, 2022, leaving at least 25 people dead and many unaccounted for. Kentucky Governor, Andy Beshear, declared a state of emergency, calling this one of the most significant, deadly floods in the commonwealth’s history. The death toll rose to 25 on July 30, up from 16 on July 29. Unfortunately, officials fear the death toll will keep growing, possibly for weeks as rescue efforts continue across hard-to-reach areas. Local emergency was declared in the city of Hazard, and in the counties of Floyd, Breathitt, Clay, Owsley, Letcher,...

We were foolish enough to believe we could water the entire southwestern U.S. with the Colorado River. Nothing could go wrong. Now it has, and tens of millions of people are staring down the barrel of real trouble. As much as 75% of the water from Lake Mead (fed by the Colorado River) goes to agriculture…so now we have a potential food production problem. Major cities like Las Vegas depend on that water for its citizens…now we have a potential personal survival problem for local residents. More than 40 million people in seven states need to decide how they go...

Tourists in Yellowstone National Park are being evacuated and all of the entrance gates are closed, rangers said. Roads in the northern part of the park and all entrance gates are shutting down Monday, June 13, after “unprecedented amounts of rainfall” caused rockslides and mudslides, the National Park Service said. All entrances will stay closed through at least Wednesday, June 15, the National Park Service said. “All entrances to Yellowstone National Park CLOSED temporarily due to heavy flooding, rockslides, extremely hazardous conditions,” officials said. Video of washed out roads and bridges here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJ0tuaEXKU

At least 56 people have died in Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco amid heavy rains over the weekend, according to the state’s civil defense forces. An additional 56[?] people are missing and at least 25 are injured, Brazil’s Minister of Regional Development Daniel Ferreira said on Sunday. More than 3,900 people have also lost their homes due to devastating downpours, Ferreira added. Some of the deaths were caused by landslides in the greater Recife area, said the Pernambuco civil defense, which has urged residents living in high risk areas to seek shelter elsewhere. In the city of Recife itself, schools...

Lightning sparked a few new small fires in the drought-stricken Southwest Monday but the thunderstorms brought welcome rain to the monster blaze that’s been churning for a month in New Mexico and is now the state’s largest in recorded history. “We haven’t seen rain in a really long time so that’s exciting,” San Miguel County Sheriff Chris Lopez said Monday might at a briefing on the biggest active fire in the U.S. burning east of Santa Fe. “It gave us a little bit of a breather,” he said at one of the command posts in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on...

Explanation: Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash? The reason: a sunglint from liquid seas. Saturn's moon Titan has numerous smooth lakes of methane that, when the angle is right, reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors. Pictured here in false-color, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 imaged the cloud-covered Titan in 2014 in different bands of cloud-piercing infrared light. This specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras. Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful. The reflecting regions confirm that northern Titan...

TV Rain, a youth-focused Russian TV station often critical of the Kremlin, was shut down by state authorities on Thursday, but its staff got in one last full newscast that ended in a symbolic protest. At the end of the night’s report, the staff gathered around the news desk. The anchors were overhead saying “no war” as everyone walked off together. The broadcast image of the empty studio was replaced by the TV station’s logo and a message asking for donations before the telecast cut to old footage from a performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake. The Swan Lake bit...

Images of dry lake beds, scorched forests and charred buildings, and drought-stricken farmland from the American West have been published in newspapers worldwide as a megadrought intensifies. Many have wondered just how severe the current drought is, and perhaps, that question can be answered in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. A new peer-reviewed study titled “Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021” says the last 22-year dry period is the worst since the Vikings and Mayans ruled parts of the world, or about 1,200 years ago. “Anyone who has been paying...

Ancient Earth was hit by extreme 'hothouse' periods of intense dryness, followed by massive rainstorms, a new study reveals. These rainstorms were hundreds of miles wide and could dump more than a foot of rain in a matter of hours, Harvard University scientists report.... ... for multiple periods in Earth's history, our planet experienced hothouse' periods' that were around 20°F to 30°F hotter than it is today. Earth likely experienced these periods multiple times in its distant past and will experience them again hundreds of millions of years from now as the sun continues to brighten, say they team, who...

Yan Daixiang squinted through dense, freezing fog as she struggled to make out her surroundings. Runners were scattered everywhere—off the trail, in ravines, on the other side of the mountain—dotting the hillside in brightly colored athletic gear. It was hard to tell loose clothing and people apart. People trudged in every direction, struggling against freezing wind and rain. Others huddled around bushes or boulders. Some runners passed Yan, heading back down the mountain. They’d tried to reach the race’s third checkpoint at mile 17, but failed. They were retreating now, back to the second checkpoint, to drop out. “It’s way...

Rescue crews searched desperately Sunday amid shattered homes and tangled debris for dozens of people still missing after record-breaking rain sent floodwaters surging through Middle Tennessee. At least 10 people were killed, including twin toddlers who were swept from their father's arms, according to surviving family members. Authorities feared the death toll could rise. The flooding in rural areas took out roads, cellphone towers and telephone lines, leaving families uncertain about whether their loved ones survived the unprecedented deluge. Emergency workers were searching door to door, said Kristi Brown, a coordinator for health and safety supervisor with Humphreys County Schools....

Highest-level rain warnings have been issued in a number of prefectures, including Fukuoka and Hiroshima. One woman has died and her husband and daughter are missing after a landslide destroyed two homes in Nagasaki prefecture. More than 150 troops, police and firefighters have been sent to help with rescue operations in the area. "They are carefully searching for the missing residents, while watching out for further mudslides as the heavy rain continues," a local official told the AFP news agency. The west of the country is worst affected but heavy downpours are expected across the country in coming days. In...

London streets were yesterday left underwater and hospitals in crisis after torrential rains hit the capital, as forecasters predict more thunderstorms to continue. The Met Office has issued an amber warning for storms covering the capital and some of the Home Counties where homes and businesses are at risk of flooding. A yellow warning for storms which could cause travel and power disruption was issued to the south from Norwich to Plymouth. Parts of south east England saw up to 50mm of rain in just an hour on Sunday afternoon while thousands of revellers enjoying the first full-capacity festival since...

In the wake of the unprecedented rainstorms across central China, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated on Thursday as officials raised the death toll to 33 for the Henan province, according to Reuters. Entire blocks of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, are still submerged after “once in 5,000 years” rainstorms from Sunday to Tuesday devastated the metro area and other surrounding areas. Zhengzhou received eight months of rain within 24 hours earlier this week which triggered flash floods. State broadcaster CCTV said Thursday the death toll stands at 33, with eight people missing across Henan. So far,...

The rain is formed using drone technology that gives clouds an electric shock to 'cajole them' into clumping together and producing precipitation The UAE is one of the most arid countries on Earth and the technique helps to increase its meagre annual rainfall Video shows it is working with monsoon-like downpours across the country