It is the middle of the rainy season in Indonesia. Particularly heavy rains in the capital, Jakarta, over the last few days have brought flooding misery to many residents. 206mm (over 8 inches) of rain have fallen during the last 3 and a half days. A similar amount would fall on London on average over the space of 3 or 4 months!

Jakarta is certainly a much wetter place, with an average for the month of February of 300mm (12 inches). This still means that the recent 206mm would normally fall over about 19 days rather than just three. As a result, flood waters up to 2 metres (6 feet) deep have inundated parts of the city. It is reported that at least 10,000 people have now had to seek temporary shelter.

The weather has been making the news and creating problems of a very different nature in the eastern maritime Canadian province of Nova Scotia. The winter here is usually very snowy but conditions on Thursday were so severe that a state of emergency was declared by the authorities. This main effect of this is that all non-essential workers are requested to stay at home and vehicles venturing out in the extreme conditions can be ordered off the road.

Snow ploughs even gave up trying to keep roads open because the snow was so heavy and it was drifting so much. An amazing 65cm (26 inches) of snow fell and this was blown around by winds up to 60mph, giving white-out conditions, where visibility is about zero. Halifax, the provincial capital, was expected to receive more snow than ever recorded before in a single day. With schools, offices and businesses closed nearly the whole region was at a standstill.

Weather News from the last five days:
19/02/2004
18/02/2004
17/02/2004
16/02/2004
15/02/2004

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