PDC Weekly Global Flood Survey: January 26, 2012
Figure 1. PDC Global Hazards Atlas displaying 7 day precipitation accumulation, and tropical cyclone 09S (Iggy) with error cones, wind speeds and storm direction)
The Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) Global Hazards Atlas, shown above, displays rainfall accumulation over the last seven days (Figure 1). As we can see, a large swath of heavy rainfall runs more or less west to east across the Indian Ocean, culminating into a very heavy area of precipitation moving into tropical cyclone 09S (Iggy) offshore to the northwest of Australia. This elongated zone of heavy precipitation then runs to the north of Australia and south of the Java, Banda, and Arafura Seas. It continues out into the Pacific Ocean to the south of Papua New Guinea into the Solomon Sea, and further to the southeast over the ocean.
A second swatch of rainfall runs from east of Indonesia across the southern Philippines and out over the Pacific Ocean. As you can see, a third wide swath also extends eastward from the East China Sea across southern Japan, and out into the north Pacific Ocean. Currently PDC is monitoring flood events in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Fiji as a result.
Figure 2. PDC Global Hazards Atlas displaying 7 day precipitation accumulation over the Americas
Shifting our focus eastward, The PDC Global Hazards Atlas shows a large area of precipitation extending from offshore of Japan, across the pacific extending its reach northeast into the west coast of Canada and the United States (Figure 2). This wet weather brought lots of rainfall from British Columbia, then down through the Cascade mountain range into the Sierra Nevada range of California. The coastal areas to the west of these mountains finally received moisture after a prolonged dry spell. This rainfall pulled back across the Great Basin states, with pockets of heavy rainfall into the Rocky Mountains. Rainfall become widespread and rather heavy again as it reached parts of the eastern United States, finally moving offshore over the Atlantic Ocean. Glancing southward, most of central America was dry, with south American wet to very wet through the last seven day period.
Figure 3. PDC Global Hazards Atlas displaying 7 day rainfall accumulation, and tropical cyclone 08S (Funsu) with error cones, wind speeds, and storm direction)
Continuing eastward across the Atlantic we find a rather thin swath of locally heavy precipitation extending just to the south of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Abidjan, Ghana, into the Gulf of Guinea, and offshore from Gabon (Figure 3). The better part of north Africa remained dry, except for a small area of light to moderate rainfall near Libya into northern Niger. Glancing southward into southern Africa, we find the Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa have been locally rainy, although heavy precipitation hadn’t occurred. Heavy rainfall and flooding in this large area was restricted the areas impacted by tropical cyclone 08S (Funso), over Madagascar and Madagascar.
Moving well north in latitude we find a rather large area of precipitation, some of it locally heavy extending from Romania down to Turkey and across to Turkmenistan. This widespread rainfall extended from Kazakhstan southward to Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The better part of India, Burma, up through China to Mongolia had only scattered showers for the most part.
PDC will be monitoring areas of high precipitation and keeping a close eye on flooding across the globe. Currently PDC is monitoring significant flood events in: Australia, Bolivia, England, Fiji, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mozambique, Philippines, United States, South Africa.
Over the next week we will be keeping a close eye on Mozambique and areas of Southeast Asia into Australia, all of which continue to experience prolonged flooding. For the most up-to-date information on these flood events and all-hazards, download the free PDC Disaster Alert mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
