QUEBEC FLOODING

QUEBEC gets flooding in story 1 and story 2 CHANCHU STILL KILLING PEOPLE.

Heavy rain in Quebec takes toll as one community evacuates 30 homes 58 minutes ago

COWANSVILLE, Que. (CP) - Nine straight days of rain forced a community east of Montreal to evacuate about 30 homes because of flooding. The banks of the Yamaska River began overflowing early Saturday morning, forcing about 100 people from their homes. Officials warned that more homes could be evacuated if the situation worsened, and asked residents to clear out their basements as a precaution. The Red Cross set up an emergency shelter for evacuees, and several pumps were working to keep the flooding from spreading.

Flooding was also reported in several nearby communities. A further 50 to 100 people were forced their homes in Bromont, Granby, St-Hilaire and Brigham. Environment Canada said more than 140 millimetres of rain had already fallen this month in southwestern Quebec. While that is still far from the record of 175 millimetres set in 1945, it says the nine consecutive days of rain in parts of the province have seen is unusual. Meteorologists blame the soggy conditions on a stationary weather pattern, known as an upper low system, hovering over the Great Lakes for the past several days. There are disturbances moving around the surface (which are) bringing rain, said Environment Canada's Rene Heroux on Saturday.

In the last 24 hours, the Cowansville area has received 75 millimetres of rain... and that's why there was some river flooding. Heroux said more regular weather patterns would return early in the week, bringing sunny skies with them. Cowansville is about an hour's drive east of Montreal.
Storm claims 90 lives, 200 missing,Saturday, May 20, 2006 Posted: 0718 GMT (1518 HKT)

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- The Asia-wide death toll from Tropical Storm Chanchu stands at nearly 90, with almost 200 Vietnamese fisherman still missing at sea, as the storm weakened Saturday off southern Japan.The missing fishermen were in two separate groups of boats in different parts of the South China Sea.

Authorities from Danang revised the number of sailors missing on Saturday, saying about 198 remained unaccounted for from both groups. Officials earlier said nearly 250 were lost. The death toll was also lowered from 28 to 24 bodies recovered. High waves in southern Japan killed one teenager and left another missing after they'd been swimming, said coast guard
spokesman Shoji Kawabata.

The storm brought rain to parts of southern and central Japan, said forecasting service Weather Underground. Earlier, Chanchu battered several areas around the South China sea after rising to typhoon strength and killed 37 in the Philippines a week ago. Eighty-seven people are confirmed to have died across the region. It was downgraded from a typhoon on Thursday as it hit China, but still caused landslides and flooding and forced the evacuation of more than 1 million people.

Landslides and collapsing buildings killed 15 people and left four missing in China's Fujian province, the provincial Water Resources Department said. Eight more people died in neighboring Guangdong province, it said.Two fishing boats from Vietnam's central city of Danang that survived the storm were returning to port with 20 corpses and four surviving sailors, said Ha Van Thong, a coast guard official from Danang. Thong said nearly 60 other survivors had been rescued from the water.

In total, 176 fishermen remained missing from the Danang group, he said. Vietnam contacted officials in China and Taiwan to assist with the rescue. Meanwhile, another 22 Vietnamese fishermen from central Quang Ngai province also remained missing after their boats were caught in the storm in a separate incident. Four bodies have been recovered from that group, said Nguyen Sau of the Quang Ngai border control. Flooding in southern Taiwan swept two women to their deaths. T.C. Lee, an official with the Hong Kong Observatory, said Chanchu was the most intense typhoon on record to strike in the South China Sea in May, an early month in the annual typhoon season.

Lee said the early arrival of the year's first typhoon did not necessarily portend an unusually active storm season, and said the observatory forecasted an average year of six to eight typhoons affecting the territory.But a Chinese meteorologist quoted by the Xinhua News Agency, Ding Yihui of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the storm appeared to be a sign of increasingly extreme weather events, a phenomena some scientists have linked to rising global temperatures.