Latest news with #Cyclone
Mint
14 hours ago
- Climate
- Mint
Vietnam Braces for Storm Wipha After Typhoon Lashes Hong Kong
(Bloomberg) -- Northern Vietnam is bracing for Tropical Cyclone Wipha, which may intensify to typhoon-strength before making landfall on Tuesday after tracking over the nation's iconic Ha Long Bay. Wipha is currently near the port city of Beihai in China's Guangxi province, and the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecasts the storm will gradually strengthen as it moves across the Gulf of Tonkin. The outer bands of the system are already bringing heavy rainfall to Vietnam's capital of Hanoi. Gale-force winds lashed Hong Kong on Sunday as Wipha tracked to the south of the city at typhoon-strength, downing trees and leading to flight cancellations. The storm skirted the mainland Chinese coast before crossing near Yangjiang and moving inland on a westerly track toward Vietnam. Wipha has traversed relatively flat terrain, keeping the system together 'rather nicely' as it heads into the Gulf of Tonkin, according to the JTWC. Warm waters will fuel its development, and Wipha will 'intensify at least to high-end tropical storm strength and potentially back to typhoon-strength prior to landfall in Vietnam,' the JTWC said. Heavy downpours are forecast for Monday through Wednesday across northeast Vietnam, the Red River Delta, and parts of the North Central coast, with as much as 600 millimeters (24 inches) in some areas, according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting. Vietnam's weather agency warned of a high flooding risk in coastal areas on Tuesday afternoon, particularly in Hung Yen-Quang Ninh near the port city of Haiphong, with storm surges of nearly five meters in some locations. Conditions are also dangerous at sea for all types of vessels as the approaching storm triggers strong winds and high waves, the bureau added. Wipha developed as an area of low pressure in waters east of the Philippines last week, bringing heavy rain to the country's north. The storm, known locally as Crising, has caused $3.8 million in damage to infrastructure and killed at least five people, the national disaster agency said on Monday. --With assistance from Neil Jerome Morales. More stories like this are available on
Scoop
2 days ago
- Climate
- Scoop
Hawke's Bay Shares Cyclone Silt, Slash Lessons With Flood-hit Tasman
The head of the silt removal programme after Cyclone Gabrielle is drawing 'eerie' similarities with Nelson Tasman floods. The head of the $228 million silt removal programme after Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawke's Bay is drawing 'eerie' similarities with Nelson Tasman region, as the flood-hit areas look ahead to their own recovery. Communities across the top of the South Island were facing millions of dollars worth of damage to roading infrastructure, farmland and properties, following the two recent floods that struck the area within a two week period, from late June. Riverside properties in Tasman were grappling with woody debris, silt and waste strewn across their properties. Cyclone Gabrielle smashed Aotearoa in February 2023 with a force of heavy rain which caused flooding damaging infrastructure, properties and land on the North Island's East Coast. Twelve people died during the natural disaster. Large amounts of silt, forestry slash and waste were swept across the whenua, prompting councils across Hawke's Bay to set up an immediate regional taskforce to deal with the material. Taskforce lead Darren de Klerk said watching the news, there were similar scenes in Tasman as there were in Hawke's Bay and Tairāwhiti following the cyclone. 'It's quite an eerie similarity, I think when you look at some of the woody debris and some of the silt and mixed product that we had to deal with,' he said. 'Obviously, productive land is another similarity in the fact that a lot of the highly productive horticulture and viticulture land has been infected.' De Klerk said after an emergency, the early stages of recovery were usually shrouded in uncertainty. 'In the early days, anyone dealing with this will find it quite overwhelming,' he said. 'Firstly, it's just understanding the level of involvement that either Civil Defence or the council has in this recovery.' De Klerk said it broke Hawke's Bay up into six zones, triaged properties by severity, and then mapped out sorting and disposal sites, in efforts to 'chomp the elephant' one bit at a time. Since its beginning, the team moved more than 2.5 million cubic metres of silt across more than 1100 properties, returning around 7000 hectares of land to productivity. It cleared one million cubic metres of woody debris across the coastline and rivers, and sorted through 12,500 broken orchard and vineyard posts. He said in Hawke's Bay, councils had to 'take a leap' to support their communities, before the first round of government funding was announced several months after the event, in May 2023. 'Essentially, you don't have a rule book,' he said. 'From a community point of view, I can guarantee you the people behind the scenes are working as absolutely as hard as they possibly can to find solutions.' He said it was working with Tasman officials to share insights and avoid 're-inventing the wheel'. 'One of the biggest probably learning is just how you manage your contractor army,' de Klerk said. 'Having a standby list of contractors available, so you're not having to work through the procurement and contracting of suppliers in the heat of the recovery phase. 'My thoughts are with them and they'll be trying their absolute best.' De Klerk said the work must be methodical, and open communication with locals was vital. He was now working for the Hastings District Council on its ongoing water and roading infrastructure cyclone recovery.
San Francisco Chronicle
5 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Wildly popular S.F. park is opening a major family-friendly expansion this week
When Presidio Tunnel Tops opened in San Francisco on July 17, 2022, Presidio Trust CEO Jean Fraser stood at the veterans Overlook and felt the pull of westward expansion to the flat parking lot below, which was at bay level and out of the wind. Exactly three years later, that pull will be realized when Outpost Meadow opens to the public Thursday the third anniversary of the wildly successful Tunnel Tops, a 14-acre public park built atop the Presidio Parkway. The 1.5-acre annex was made a reality thanks to a $12 million grant from the California Natural Resources Agency. 'This is the last pearl on the string,' said Fraser, after passing through a locked Cyclone fence to walk the circumference of the new addition with a reporter last week. 'It's the final connection.' Outpost Meadow is specifically a connection to the Outpost, a fantastical nature playground at Tunnel Tops that had 500,000 visits last year alone. The concept for Outpost Meadow is that birthday parties and picnics can naturally spread out and not have to climb the steps to the picnic areas at Tunnel Tops. The paved pathway extends seamlessly from the Outpost to Outpost Meadow, which has reclaimed half of the parking lot once reserved for the Sports Basement, a Presidio tenant that occupies the former post commissary. From the vantage of the Overlook, on the bluff above it, the Meadow looks like it has been there all along — and in one sense, it has. It is part of the original park design by landscape architect firm Field Operations and was intended to be built out with the original park. But Fraser took it off the plans when the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown hit in the middle of construction. With the budget for Tunnel Tops itself ballooning to $118 million, most of it privately raised by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, that was the end of Outpost Meadow — until the state provided funds through its Outdoors for All initiative to bring parks closer to the urban masses. 'We knew we wanted to do this, but the price tag made it too ambitious,' Fraser said. 'The design was ready to go when the state grant came through.' The three-year delay allowed the Presidio Trust to talk to community groups and survey users of Tunnel Tops, which has attracted 5 million visits since it opened. At the top of their wish list: More tables, both reservable and first-come, first-served. Currently on busy days, the reservable tables at Picnic Place at the top of the tunnel are 'perpetually sold out,' Fraser said, at a fee of $130 per day on weekdays and $170 on weekends. Outpost Meadow will significantly expand those options, offering 19 sturdy tables of thick-cut Monterey Cypress and Douglas Fir in three large picnic areas with barbecue pits around a central green. Two of the three pods will be reservable starting in October, at a price to be determined. The third pod will be up for grabs. Survey responders also asked for more shade. Some of the picnic areas will be outfitted with umbrellas, though they will have to withstand the perpetual fog that blows in through the Golden Gate and can turn the strongest of umbrellas inside out. 'I'm hopeful the umbrellas will last in the wind,' Fraser said. Responders also wanted a flat space where they can kick a soccer ball around, and were obliged with a flat oval of fresh, rolled-out sod. There is also sod on Tunnel Tops, but by Fraser's measure, you can never have enough of it in an urban environment. 'I brought up my kids in the city,' she said, 'and I'll never forget the first time my daughter first put her feet on natural grass. It was like, 'What is this weird stuff?'' The grass will be irrigated by well water, thanks to Lobos Creek, the last free flowing waterway in the city, which reaches its terminus in the Presidio. The grass will also serve as flood control. On the old parking lot, rainwater pooled with no place to go. But the new lawn and surrounding tanbark, dotted with 23,000 native shrubs and trees, have drainage underneath. 'It's all permeable,' said Travis Beck, chief park officer. 'The water will go straight down.' The parking lot that remains in front of Sports Basement has been reduced by half and is open to anyone, by public meter. Outpost Meadow is also serviced by the 30-Stockton Muni bus, which has been extended to a new terminus behind the Sports Basement. There are new Muni stops in both directions on Old Mason Street, which goes by the new park, to deposit and pick up passengers as soon as the fence comes down Thursday. It will offer a new vantage point for people like Mikhiel and Samantha Tareen of North Beach, who were introducing their 10-day-old daughter, Simone, to their favorite park last week. 'It's where we bring people who are visiting,' said Mikhiel, originally from Portland, Ore. 'You get the closest and most unobstructed view of the city from here.' The Tareens, and their dog Stanley, are Tunnel Tops regulars, but when standing on the Overlook they could not tell where the Outpost ended and Outpost Meadow began. 'I didn't know that was a new thing,' Mikhiel said. 'We haven't had an issue with space here, but I like having more of it.'
West Australian
10-07-2025
- Business
- West Australian
American West strikes deep, thick copper at Canadian play
American West Metals has intercepted thick copper sulphides at depth at its Storm Copper project in Nunavut, Canada, with a diamond drill hole intersecting a lengthy 47 metres of visual copper sulphide mineralisation at its high-priority Cyclone Deeps target. The result reaffirms the potential for a large-scale, stacked copper horizon beneath the company's flagship Cyclone deposit, setting the stage for significant resource growth across its massive 2200-square-kilometre tenure. The 440m deep hole was collared in the central Graben area to test the Cyclone Deeps target, a deep extension of the near-surface 13-million-tonne plus Cyclone deposit - the project's largest known resource. The hole intersected two broad zones of visual copper sulphide mineralisation between 284m and 319m, and 368m to 380m downhole, totalling 47m of sulphide-bearing intervals. Hosted within fractured dolomitic mudstones of the prospective Allen Bay Formation, the mineralisation features veinlets and matrix breccias with the sulphide-bearing copper mineralisation. The visual characteristics of the intercept mirror those seen at the edges of the Cyclone deposit, reinforcing the geological model of a fault-offset, sediment-hosted copper system that extends to significant depths. An American West hole last year was interpreted to have intercepted the Cyclone Deeps target, where it returned 10m of mineralisation running 1.2 per cent copper from 311m. The confirmation of the interpreted mineralisation will be returned from lab analysis within four to six weeks. Adding firepower to the exploration campaign, American West has completed the first phase of a mobile magneto-telluric (MMT) survey across its core Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor, covering 1320 line-kilometres. The survey was designed to detect deeper copper sulphide accumulations, having already identified six conductive anomalies at depths less than 350m, including one corresponding to the Cyclone deposit. The correlation to the company's largest deposit validates the technique. Management believes several larger anomalies at depths beyond 350m are potentially linked to very large structural or geological shifts and corresponding copper deposition. Detailed data processing and 3D modelling are underway to refine the deeper targets for drilling, while American West's reverse circulation drilling program continues to progress. The company says 12 holes have already been completed, including seven resource definition holes at its Thunder, Lightning Ridge and Corona deposits. Two holes have been plunged to test shallow extensions of the shallow Cyclone, and three wildcat holes have been drilled to investigate high-priority targets at The Gap and southern graben areas. Initial observations from these holes are expected within one to two weeks, with assays to follow in four to six weeks. American West's efforts have received a boost from the Nunavut government, which has awarded CAD$250,000 (A$280,000) through its Discover Invest Grow program to support the isolated state's resource economy. The Storm project is fast becoming a leading development opportunity for the burgeoning Nunavut, where a current mineral resource sits at 20.6 million tonnes at 1.1 per cent copper and 3.3 grams per tonne silver, equating to 228,500t of contained copper and 2.2M ounces of silver. With less than 5 per cent of the 110km copper belt systematically explored, the latest drilling and geophysical results suggest significant upside remains. The company's preliminary economic assessment recently projected a US$149 million (A$228 million) net present value and a 46 per cent internal rate of return for a low-capex, 10-year open-pit operation. Add to that, 80 per cent initial capital secured through an offtake agreement with Ocean Partners Holdings and a red-hot red metal price pushing north of US$10,000 (A$15,300) for the first time this year. As American West ramps up its 2025 program, the thick copper intercept at Cyclone Deeps, combined with promising geophysical anomalies, reaffirm the company's belief that 'every fault, every space, every gap in the rocks that we hit, has copper in it'. At the continued rate of discovery, the already 10-year mine life operation could be looking at a much bigger facelift for Storm, let alone the broader 110km prospective Central Graben. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
New Indian Express
09-07-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
India has emerged as global leader in disaster relief: PM's principal secretary
BENGALURU: Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Dr P K Mishra on Wednesday said that India has emerged as a key global responder in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations under the leadership of PM Modi. Speaking at the Silver Jubilee Foundation Day of the Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore on, Dr Mishra emphasised the pivotal role that institutions, legislation, regulation, and capacity building have played in transforming India's disaster management system over the last 25 years. Delivering a special lecture titled 'From Gujarat to Myanmar: Evolution of India's Disaster Management Policy and Practice during the Last 25 Years,' he reflected on India's journey from being disaster-prone to disaster-ready. India's disaster management reforms, he explained, were born out of catastrophic events such as the 1991 Odisha Super Cyclone, the 1993 Latur earthquake, the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. These events exposed systemic vulnerabilities but also became catalysts for change. The Gujarat earthquake, in particular, became a watershed moment. The state's recovery programme, through the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority (GSDMA), introduced a comprehensive model of response, reconstruction, risk mitigation, policy formulation, and public awareness. This model was later mirrored in national frameworks and institutions, he highlighted.
