It's official: New York got soaked this summer
June-September rain average was most since 1971

ALBANY, N.Y. - New York residents who spent the summer sloshing through puddles won't be surprised to learn the last four months were the rainiest in decades for the period.

Average precipitation statewide for June through September was 21.3 inches, according to data from the Northeast Regional Climate Center. That's the highest average for that four-month period since at least 1971. Monthly statewide averages ranged from 7.3 inches in June to 4.2 inches in August.

The four-month period included the late June deluge that caused massive flooding and destruction from Binghamton to the Catskills to the Mohawk Valley. But that storm, which forced the evacuation of thousands, came during a particularly rainy spell in New York.

In September, remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto flooded parts of the New York City region, cutting power to 250,000 and washing away beaches. And heavy rains near Syracuse in mid-July ripped a 30-foot hole in a state highway.

The four-month period does not include the snowstorm that buried Buffalo under two feet of snow last week.

Some rainy spells can be traced to large-scale weather patterns, but Keith Eggleston, a climatologist at the Cornell University-based weather center, said that was not the case in New York this summer.

"We can't chalk it up to El Nino or anything like that, it just happened to be a very wet period," Eggleston said. He said it's unclear if wet weather will continue.

Dengue fever scare grows in Pakistan as deaths mount

KARACHI, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Mosquito-borne dengue fever killed five people in Pakistan's southern Sindh province on Friday, taking the toll to 25 in the past four months, and reported cases rose sharply, a health official said.

Shakeel Malik, a provincial health ministry official, said two people died in Karachi, and three others elsewhere in Sindh, while 177 patients were being treated.

"At least 53 new cases of dengue fever were reported on Friday," Malik told Reuters, adding that special laboratories had been set up at some state-run hospitals to test for the disease.

Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and the capital of Sindh province, has been the worst hit, with 22 deaths, and over half of them were registered this month.

Dengue is a tropical disease and is caused by a specific type of mosquito -- the Aedes mosquito -- that bites during the day. The mosquitoes usually breed in rain water in discarded containers and car tyres.

Neighbouring India has reported nearly 5,000 dengue cases, including 94 deaths, since August.

America's Weather

Scientists: Antarctic ozone hole is largest ever recorded


In this image from Sept. 24, 2006, the Antarctic ozone hole was equal to the record single-day largest area of 11.4 million square miles, reached on Sept. 9, 2000.

WASHINGTON (AP) — This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the biggest ever, government scientists said Thursday.
The so-called hole is a region where there is severe depletion of the layer of ozone — a form of oxygen — in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth by blocking the sun's ultraviolet rays.

Scientists say human-produced gases such as bromine and chlorine damage the layer, causing the hole. That's why many compounds such as spray-can propellants have been banned in recent years.

German cottage destroyed by meteor

BERLIN (Reuters) - A fire that destroyed a cottage near Bonn and injured a 77-year-old man was probably caused by a meteor and witnesses saw an arc of blazing light in the sky, German police said on Friday.

Burkhard Rick, a spokesman for the police in Siegburg east of Bonn, said the fire gutted the cottage and badly burned the man's hands and face in the incident on October 10.

"We sought assistance from Bochum observatory and they noted that at that particular moment the earth was near a field of meteoroid splinter and it could be assumed that particles had entered the atmosphere," he said.

"The particles usually don't reach the surface because they disintegrate in the atmosphere," he added. "But some can make it to the ground. We believe this was a bolide (meteoric fireball) with a size of no more than 10 mm."

Indonesia disaster shows risks of mud volcanoes


A villager searches for his belongings, which were washed away by hot mud in Sidoarjo, East Java, August 29, 2006. Researchers would 'probably never know' exactly what triggered the catastrophic mudflow at Sidoarjo, releasing the build-up of pressure deep below ground. The trigger might have been a magnitude 4 earthquake two days before the mudflow began, he said, or the drilling of a gas exploration well operated by PT Lapindo Brantas Inc, which is controlled by Pt Energi Mega Persada. (Sigit Pamungkas/Reuters)

OSLO (Reuters) - In a village in Indonesia's East Java province, a man is struggling to watch television with a volcano erupting in his living room.

Risks from volcanoes that ooze mud rather than spew lava have long been underestimated worldwide, even with a cataclysmic mudflow in another part of Java that has swamped an area the size of Monaco and forced 10,000 people from their homes.

Experts say the disaster, flooding the Sidoarjo region since May 29, highlights lack of knowledge about mud volcanoes, thousands of which have been found from Alaska to Australia. They range from tiny seeps to cones 500 meters (1,640 ft) tall.

"In Java nobody ever studied mud volcanoes," said Adriano Mazzini, a leading Italian volcano expert at the University of Oslo who says the Indonesian disaster may signal the first time people have recorded the birth of a mud volcano.

"In Indonesia they have other priorities -- magmatic volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis," he told Reuters.

On Java, villages about 10-20 km (6-12 miles) north of the mud eruption -- Gununganyar, Kalanganyar and Pulungan -- are built on old, near-dormant mud volcanoes that must have seemed attractive-looking mounds to village founders.

Pulungan was the most vivid example of ignoring the risks of mud volcanoes, such as subsidence.

"We went to one house where a man took us into his living room. He opened the cupboard beneath the television, and there were seeps erupting," Mazzini said after a recent trip.

Another home in Pulungan has collapsed and elsewhere many residents are worried by seeps of gas, mud and fluids. The volcano may have been stirred by an earthquake on May 27, two days before the catastrophic mudflow began.

Tropical Storm forms off Mexico's coast

MEXICO CITY - Tropical Storm Paul formed off Mexico's west coast Saturday, and forecasters said it could strengthen into a hurricane and reach land within days.

The storm was hovering over the Pacific Ocean about 315 miles south of the coastal city of Cabo Corrientes, said Lixion Avila, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The storm, which had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, could intensify into a hurricane within three days, Avila said. The storm was headed west, toward the Mexican mainland.