The governors of Florida and South Carolina have warned all residents in areas that may be affected by Hurricane Matthew  to evacuate or make appropriate preparations. The storm has crossed Haiti, but with communications down over most of the island, damage and casualties are unknown.

Life-threatening surf and rip-currents are now a danger over a wide area from Puerto Rico to Venezuela and north into the Bahamas. In their 8 a.m. Tuesday advisory, National Hurricane Center forecasters said the storm’s sustained winds are 145 mph. Matthew is now tracking slightly westward of its original course and should begin to affect Florida on Thursday, while passing directly over the Bahamas.
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Storms across the southern and central US have left at least 35 people dead and devastated many communities. While flooding and severe thunderstorms continued in the southeast on Sunday, north Texas and Oklahoma began to experience dramatic temperature drops and heavy snowfall. On November 18, our Climatewatch section predicted "because of warm, moist air from the 2015 el Nino extending up into the central United States, there will be an unusual amount of thunderstorm activity in that area into the winter. Severe storms with copious snowfall could become commonplace." Climatewatch, which has been running since 2000, has rarely failed to accurately predict future weather.read more

Hurricane Patricia, which struck southern Mexico over the weekend made landfall so quickly that it declined within hours into a tropical storm, then broke up into disorganized cells. Patricia was the most powerful hurricane ever recorded. However, the speed with which it came ashore in a relatively arid area meant that its vertical circulation was impeded, and what could have been a great disaster became an event involving flooding and minor wind damage.

Farther north in Texas, an extension of the storm complex dumped as much as 20 inches of rain east of Dallas, but for the most part the state experienced a rainfall 4 to 6 inches, which is resulting in a significant increase in water levels in reservoirs and aquifers.
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Hurricane Joaquin’s winds missed the US Eastern Seaboard, but the storm caused massive flooding in South Carolina, resulting in at least 19 deaths, burst dams, flooded streets, highways and homes, and serious and growing water shortages due to damage to water systems and reservoirs. Because the storm moved rapidly out to sea, already waterlogged parts of the region farther north were spared. The flooding in South Carolina is said to be the worst ever recorded, and is being called a thousand year flood, of which we now have many.

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