In the last week, New Zealand has received unprecedented rainfall, resulting in the worst floods in at least 200 years in Auckland. On 27 January, Auckland airport reported 249mm of rainfall in a 24-hour period, equivalent to a month’s worth of rain in less than an hour. There was 280mm in one day at another station, Albert Park, with 211mm dropping in less than six hours.
These totals are more than 8.5 times higher than the average January and more than 2.5 times higher than the average summer. Overall, Auckland experienced the wettest January on record, with more than a metre of rain pouring in certain areas.
Rainfall has caused multiple landslides, flooding, and property destruction, with four people killed and 350 people in need of emergency shelter. More than 9,000 people are still stranded as flights into and out of Auckland remain delayed or cancelled.
A severe cold front moved southward into Texas last weekend, with places in Oklahoma registering a 10-20F drop in temperature within an hour. Cold air continued at and near the surface across the Southern Plains into this week, although higher-altitude south-westerly flow advected warmer air over the top of this shallow cold zone.
This combination contributed to freezing rain, a phenomenon in which rain becomes supercooled through the cold surface layer before falling and turns to ice on any surfaces. The freezing rain coated roadways and weighed down trees with ice, causing numerous traffic accidents. The drops solidified into ice pellets where the cold layer was slightly deeper, with “thundersleet” seen earlier this week in Dallas, Texas.
Northern Asia has had its coldest month in more than a decade, with temperatures as low as -62.7 degrees Celsius in Siberia. More than 170 humans and 70,000 cattle have died in Afghanistan in the last two weeks as temperatures drop to -34 degrees Celsius. According to the United Nations, 28 million Afghans require immediate medical attention, with many rural villages unable to afford to heat their houses.
