Wild Weather Across the World
From California to the Philippians, wild weather wrecked regions across the globe from Wednesday to today. A wildfire, hurricane and typhoon all hit different areas.
Fires in California: Winds at 80 mph stirred up a wildfire burning through farmland north of Los Angeles, California, Wednesday morning.
Authorities say the fire is out of control and has grown to around 10,400 acres, consuming luxury homes and ranches near Camarillo Heights. Thousands of residents were ordered to evacuate, and firefighters are scrambling to rescue others.
Every helicopter, every fixed wing aircraft, everything we’ve been able to get a hold of is here fighting this fire, and it is moving at a dangerous rate.
Dustin Gardner, Ventura county fire chief
Hurricane in Cuba: Category 3 Hurricane Rafael knocked out Cuba’s entire power grid after hitting the island Wednesday afternoon. Winds of over 100 mph caused the blackout.
“We had several trips of the load of the system in the western zone that caused oscillations in the frequency of the system and caused it to collapse completely,” Félix Estrada Rodríguez, the director of the national dispatch of the Electric Union, told state television.
Rafael is the first Category 3 hurricane to hit Cuba since Hurricane Ian in 2022.
Typhoon in the Philippines: This morning, heavy rainfall flooded areas of the northern Philippine province of Cagayan, after Typhoon Yinxing, locally named Marce, slammed into the archipelago.
Yinxing was equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane when it hit, with wind gusts of nearly 150 mph. Tens of thousands of villagers fled to emergency shelters.
This is the 13th such storm to sweep across the Philippines this year. Just a few weeks ago, Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey left at least 151 people dead.
Why disasters strike: When storms and disasters like these occur, activists are quick to blame climate change: “CO2 emissions are too high,” “human impact is causing temperatures to rise,” etc. But could there be another cause?
Read Why ‘Natural’ Disasters? to find out.
