Weather

If July felt unusually hot this year in the Inland Northwest, you are right. An analysis by the National Weather Service in the region showed that the average temperature for the month broke the record for Sandpoint and Kellogg.

A vulture patiently watches a row of dying sea lions. Photo by Associated Press

The Yanomamis think it's Armageddon. For weeks, the Indians of northwestern Brazil's Roraima state, about 2,000 miles from Rio de Janeiro, have watched in fear as what officials call the worst fire ever to strike the Amazon rain forest edges toward their huts. Searching the smoke-filled skies, the Yanomamis see angry spirits, descending plagues and the world's approaching end. They've turned to chanting for hours with their shamans, trusting Stone Age traditions to stave off a particularly 21st-century disaster.

Nearly 100 young students had just finished their lunch at a school in eastern India when the tornado struck. "Suddenly very strong winds hit the school from nowhere. Then the walls collapsed," 12-year-old Ranjan Ray recalled Wednesday.

Surveys released Wednesday at a forestry conference indicate at least 38,000 square miles of woodland were damaged during January's catastrophic ice storm in eastern Canada and northern New England. Barbara Burns of Vermont's forest department and Bruce Pendrel of the Canadian Forest Service said the damage is variable and spotty but the hardest hit areas are in Quebec, Ontario and Maine. Burns said the most severe losses are in hardwood stands, notably birch, poplar and maple.

When you're talking about the damage done to California agriculture by this winter's El Nino-influenced rainstorms, time is of the essence. Do you mean short-term problems, like the damage the water did to fruit now being harvested? Do you mean medium-term problems, such as how the rain delayed plantings for crops that will be harvested this spring? Or is it long term: How is this going to play out in the fall and beyond? Strawberries have borne the brunt of the storms so far, but while some fruit was lost, few plants were damaged. Given a few more days of clear weather, things should be back to normal.

Thick fog covers Hong Kong harbor Sunday, leading to a monumental traffic jam. Photo by Associated Press

A snow-covered bicycle in Madison, Wis., is stark testimony to the winter ravages that continue to plague the Midwest. Photo by Associated Press

Los Angeles County inmates on a work detail spread plastic sheeting over the front of the home of Virginia Reeves to turn rainwater away from already soggy ground on Wednesday in Malibu, Calif. There is concern that her home and the road running in front of it could be further undermined in future storms. Photo by Associated Press

Many visitors attending the annual Cherry Blossom festival in the nation's capital this year may end up missing the main attraction. The season's mild winter has sparked an early spring, so latecomers may be left staring at tulips. "As if we don't have enough to blame on El Nino, we have one more," National Park Service horticulturist Robert DeFeo half-joked while talking to reporters on Wednesday. "We're about 10 or 12 days early this year."

California's El Nino rains have brought a bumper crop of allergy-producing mold and pollen, and people are suffering. Doctors' waiting rooms are clogged with the sniffling, wheezing and itchy-eyed. "I have patients who haven't had allergy attacks for 15 years coming in with 10 days of horrible allergic symptoms," Dr. Bernard Geller, a Santa Monica allergist, said Tuesday. Los Angeles had its wettest February on record with 13.68 inches of rain, toppling the 1884 record of 13.37. The rain is stimulating the growth of mold, trees and grass.

Sometime after midnight, a baby asleep on Donald Duck sheets was swept out of her house, out of her crib and into the night. That she was found at all is a miracle. That she was alive is whatever is better than that. Nine-month-old Tiffany Sarabia had ridden the wave of a mudslide that had killed two men early Tuesday, demolished three homes and a hillside that had stood for centuries in Laguna Beach, Calif. She landed against a shelter for cats, was seen by a man who had lost his glasses, handed to a stranger who handed her to a paramedic - who made sure she was breathing - then handed her to a woman who held her close.

President Clinton steps through debris and survey the damage by a tornado at the Ponderosa RV Park in Kissimmee, Fla., on Wednesday. Photo by Associated Press

Two locals wade through flooded streets of Lakeport, Calif. Photo by Associated Press

Exhausted rescue workers take a breather Monday after struggling through the night in hard-hit Kissimmee, Fla. Photo by Associated Press

A gas pipeline ruptured by a landslide erupted in flames, streams rose and mountains were coated in snow Tuesday as another storm blew across an already soggy California. The towering plume of flaming natural gas gushed from coastal Ventura County hills above U.S. 101 after a night of heavy rain. It followed an oil pipeline break in the county on Saturday.

Los Angeles County building safety inspectors Gary Solem, left, and David Hsu discuss damage to a house's foundation caused by a mudslide in the Canogo Park community of Los Angeles on Friday. Photo by Associated Press

Soldiers and rescue workers scraped away mud and debris Monday after El Nino-fed floodwaters roared through a border shantytown, killing 13 people and forcing hundreds to flee their homes. Three teenage girls were killed after fast-flowing mud swallowed their family's car at the foot of the eastern shantytown of Mexico Lindo, or Beautiful Mexico. Swirling floodwaters dragged an 18-year-old girl from her house to her death.