High-impact weather and climate events
in September 2006

The information summarized has been culled from international press reports and is indicative only. For official information, including final statistics, readers are advised to contact the National Meteorological Service of the country in question.

Heavy rain/ flood/monsoon/mudslides
Australia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Spain, USA

Australia
Gale force winds and heavy rain disrupted Sydney transport network resulting into long delays for commuters traveling by air, road, rail and ferries. 

India
Over 20 000 people were evacuated as a result of flooding, triggered by monsoon rains. Over 1.5 million people were rendered homeless with severe damage to thousands of acres of paddy crop in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.

Nigeria
Seventeen people were killed on a farmland after a heavy rain that caused serious floods in Osi-Ekiti town in Kwara State, Nigeria. 

Spain
Torrential rain fell on eastern regions causing severe flooding of the metro stations disrupting flights in Barcelona after a summer in which the country experienced the worst drought on record. 

USA
At least one person died after heavy rain in the Tucson area of Arizona, causing widespread flooding and disrupted traffic in the streets. 

Frost
Australia
Frost retarded the growth of grain crops in western Victoria as the temperature went below zero.

Drought and locust
Australia, Spain, Mexico

Australia
Farmers hit by the severe drought were forced to return their tens of thousands of cattle to parch on expensive hand feeds, as the country's usual green stock routes were badly affected. 

Spain
Drought sapped water reserves to record lowest, with threats on supplies to the populous southern regions of Alicante and Murcia. Reservoirs fell by a percentage point in a week to 40.6 percent; the lowest since readings were first made 10 years ago.  

Mexico
Clouds of locusts descended around the Mexican beach resort of Cancun, destroying corn crops in a region still recovering from the devastating fury of last year's Hurricane Wilma. 

Tornado
USA
A tornado of F1 on the Fujita scale, with maximum winds estimated at between 100 and 110 miles per hour, damaged several buildings and downed many trees.

Hurricane Florence
Bermuda

Florence devastated Bermuda, causing wide spread of power outage. 

Tropical storm Helene
USA

The tropical storm Helene was the eighth named storm of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. It located about 900 km west of the south Cape Verde Island and later moved west-northwest at 35 km/h across the Atlantic without doing any damage. 

Typhoon Shanshan
Japan

At least five people died and more than 100 injured with over 300 flights grounded when the strong typhoon swept through southwestern Japan with fierce winds and heavy rains.

Typhoon Yagi
Japan

The typhoon, whose name means "goat" in Japanese, was a Category 4 storm. It was a notch below a Category 5 super typhoon. The storm veer further north into the Pacific with little impact on Tokyo.

Hurricane Gordon
Spain, UK, Portugal

Spain
Gordon blew through northwestern Spanish region of Galicia, injuring at least one person and cutting traffic links.

UK
Thousands of householders were without electricity when hurricane Gordon devastated parts of the UK. One of the worst affected areas was Northern Ireland, where the wind at 119 km/h disturbed the province for many hours.

Portugal
The Azores escaped significant damage. There were only reports of toppled trees and power lines, knocking out power to some communities, particularly on Santa Maria Island.

Typhoon Xangsane
 Philippines, Viet Nam

Philippines
The typhoon triggered heavy rain and winds of up to 160 km/h, lashing the northern and central Philippines, grounding flights, vessels, and schools activities.

Viet Nam
Two people were killed and at least 80 others injured with hundreds of homes damaged when the typhoon struck. 

Hurricane Isaac
USA

Isaac formed in the Central Atlantic but intensified into a hurricane, and then curved eastward before heading for the U.S. East Coast. Isaac is the fifth hurricane and the ninth named storm of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season.