It’s been a wild week of weather in many parts of the United States, from heat waves to snowstorms to flash floods.
Here’s a look at some of the weather events:
Midwest sizzles under heat wave
Millions of people in the Midwest have been enduring dangerous heat and humidity.
An emergency medicine physician treating Minnesota State Fair-goers for heat illnesses saw firefighters cut rings off two people’s swollen fingers Monday in hot weather that combined with humidity made it feel well over 37.7 degrees Celsius.
Soaring late summer temperatures also prompted some Midwestern schools to let out early or cancel sports practices.
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The National Weather Service issued heat warnings or advisories across Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Oklahoma.
Several cities including Chicago opened cooling centres.
Forecasters said Tuesday also will be scorching hot for areas of the Midwest before the heat wave shifts to the south and east.
West Coast mountains get early snowstorm
An unusually cold storm on the mountain peaks along the West Coast late last week brought a hint of winter in August.
The system dropped out of the Gulf of Alaska, down through the Pacific Northwest and into California.
Mount Rainier, southeast of Seattle, got a high-elevation dusting, as did central Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor resort.
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Mount Shasta, the Cascade Range volcano that rises to 4317 metres above far northern California, wore a white blanket after the storm clouds passed.
The mountain’s Helen Lake, which sits at 3170 metres received about 15 centimetres of snow, and there were greater amounts at higher elevations, according to the US Forest Service’s Shasta Ranger Station.
Tropical storm dumps heavy rain on Hawaii
Three tropical cyclones swirled over the Pacific Ocean on Monday, including Tropical Storm Hone, which brought heavy rain to Hawaii, Hurricane Gilma, which was gaining strength, and Tropical Storm Hector which was churning westward, far off the coast of southern tip of Baja California.
The biggest impacts from Tropical Storm Hone were rainfall and flash floods that resulted in road closures, downed power lines and damaged trees in some areas of the Big Island, said William Ahue, a forecaster at the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu.
No injuries or major damage had been reported, authorities said.
Deadly Alaska landslide crashes into homes
A landslide that cut a path down a steep, thickly forested hillside crashed into several homes in Ketchikan, Alaska, in the latest such disaster to strike the mountainous region.
Sunday’s slide killed one person and injured three others and prompted the mandatory evacuation of nearby homes in the city, a popular cruise ship stop along the famed Inside Passage in the south eastern Alaska panhandle.
The slide area remained unstable on Monday, and authorities said that state and local geologists were arriving to assess the area for potential secondary slides.
Last November, six people — including a family of five — were killed when a landslide destroyed two homes in Wrangell, north of Ketchikan.
Flash flood hits Grand Canyon National Park
The body of an Arizona woman who disappeared in Grand Canyon National Park after a flash flood was recovered on Sunday, park rangers said.
The body of Chenoa Nickerson, 33, was discovered by a group rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the park said in a statement.
Nickerson was hiking along Havasu Creek about 800 metres from where it meets up with the Colorado River when the flash flood struck.
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Nickerson’s husband was among the more than 100 people safely evacuated.
The flood trapped several hikers in the area above and below Beaver Falls, one of a series of usually blue-green waterfalls that draw tourists from around the world to the Havasupai Tribe’s reservation.
The area is prone to flooding that turns its iconic waterfalls chocolate brown.
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