Each of these rain-fuelled disasters followed a heat wave, suggesting the regions have been swinging wildly between two contradictory extremes. But extreme heat and extreme rainfall are closely related — and being gassed-up by climate change, scientists say.

Sweltering spring temperatures in South Asia, topping 50 C, are likely to have warmed the Indian Ocean. That warm water would then have fuelled what the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this week called “a monsoon on steroids” over Pakistan – dumping more than three times as much rain as the 30-year average for August and inundating a third of the country.

More than 1,100 people have been killed, crops are ruined, and homes destroyed, prompting urgent pleas for aid.

It will take weeks if not months to determine exactly how much of a role climate change may have played in this year’s floods, but scientists agree it is supercharging extremes. Heatwaves are already more frequent and intense worldwide, increasing evaporation from both the land and the ocean. Because a warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture, the water vapour builds until clouds eventually break and send down heavier rain.

“The same places can be expected to experience both flooding and drought in a hotter climate,” said climate scientist Deepti Singh at Washington State University.

Flash floods

The area around Dallas had been bone dry for three months, with more than half of Texas suffering extreme drought. Cotton crops withered in the fields. Ranchers were forced to kill off much of their cattle for lack of feed. Soils hardened and cracked, forming a parched checkerboard across the landscape — the perfect setup for flash flooding.

It eventually rained on Aug. 21, dropping nearly 10 inches within 24 hours, but the ground was too hard to absorb the deluge, leaving much of the water to flow through the city. Interstate traffic came to a halt. Flights were cancelled. And apartments in the historic area of Old East Dallas were swamped.

In a drought-stricken area, “the ground can almost act like concrete in an urban environment”, said climate scientist Liz Stephens at the University of Reading in Britain.

Unlike flooding that comes from rivers gradually overflowing their banks, flash floods are triggered by intense rain in a short period – usually less than six hours – giving little warning before the water swells into a raging torrent. In an urban population centre, they pose the most risk. But flash floods also often rip through desert canyons in Utah and Arizona, threatening hikers.

There have been four other major flash floods in the United States since July – in Kentucky, eastern Illinois, California’s Death Valley and the Missouri city of St. Louis. Each saw enough rain to be considered a once-in-1,000-years event, according to historical trends.

It’s unclear how far that frequency will increase as the world continues warming.

Floods here, floods there

Hit over the summer by its worst heatwave in six decades, China’s drought-stricken Yangtze River Basin is struggling with both power and water shortages. Desperate for rain, some provinces within the basin have begun “seeding” clouds, sending planes into the sky to release the chemical silver iodide to cause the clouds to break.

But as late summer rains arrive now, officials are worried about having too much water. More than 119,000 people have been evacuated from flood-risk areas of southwestern China, according to state media. Read full story

The Ministry of Emergency Management warned on Monday that parts of China were “alternating between drought and flood” and urged vigilance this week in monitoring dried-up riverbeds being inundated by intense rain. The ministry also asked that local authorities store rainwater, to potentially help relieve other drought-stricken areas of the country.

Weather events across the Northern Hemisphere can also be connected by the polar jet stream, a fast-flowing air current that moves weather systems from one part of the world to another.

But scientists have found that warming trends along with recent disturbances in air circulation may be increasing the chances of simultaneous extremes.

The jet stream disturbance is still a topic of intense research. But one recent study suggested that these factors combined have made it seven times more likely for heatwaves to be occurring simultaneously in the Northern Hemisphere than 40 years ago, according to the research published in January in the Journal of Climate.

“The warming trend is the main driver behind the increase in concurrent heatwaves,” said climate scientist Kai Kornhuber at Columbia University in New York, who was part of a team including Singh that worked on the study.

But there is evidence, including the research around the jet stream, “to believe that atmospheric dynamics have contributed to this increasing trend.”

Reporting for Reuters by Gloria Dickie in London and David Stanway in Shanghai.

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The strain in question has existed in some regions of the country since 2012, the ministry said in a statement.

Officials said they’ve quarantined the farm and ordered the culling of 70,000 chickens to contain the spread.

The farm is in the municipality of General Cepeda in the state’s southeast, about 350 km southwest of the U.S. border at Laredo, Tex.

Health officials have been on alert for new viruses in the country since the 2009 outbreak of H1N1 virus, known as “swine flu,” that shut down the capital city for several days when it was detected in people.

The ag ministry, in its release, said the country’s hatching egg sector produces about 1.76 billion chickens a year, so the cull at the one farm doesn’t pose a significant risk to the Mexican food supply.

— Reporting for Reuters by Adriana Barrera and Stefanie Eschenbacher. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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About 1.2 million cattle are located in a 54-county disaster area drenched by Harvey, which made landfall as a hurricane last weekend. With more torrential rain in the forecast, ranchers are expressing worry that some animals could perish despite efforts to save them.

Texas leads U.S. states in cattle and cotton production. An estimated US$150 million worth of cotton has been lost as the storms ripped the bolls off plants and left white fiber strewn across fields. Texas Gulf Coast export terminals that handle about a quarter of U.S. wheat exports also remained shuttered.

Of immediate concern to ranchers were cattle stranded by high water infested with venomous snakes, fire ants and alligators, said Hollis “Peanut” Gilfillian, a cattle rancher in Winnie, Tex., about 100 km east of hard-hit Houston.

“We’re in gator country… period,” said Gilfillian, adding that nearly every pond on the ranches in his area contain alligators.

“It’s not unusual to see an alligator in my backyard or road ditch,” he said, but added, “There’s plenty other animals that they (alligators) would much rather eat, such as fish, as opposed to trying to go after cattle.”

Ranchers had tried to prepare for the storm last week by moving cattle to the nearest hills or trucking them to safety in the north of the state, cattle industry groups said.

Chuck Kiker, who raises cattle on his farm near Beaumont, about 100 km northeast of Houston, opted to leave his animals in place but was caught off guard by the storm’s severity.

“You can’t move animals at this point, so you’re kind of stuck because of high water everywhere. There’s really no place to move them,” he said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared 54 counties a disaster area. About 27 per cent of the state’s 4.46 million-head beef cow herd is in those 54 counties, according to Texas A&M University livestock economist David Anderson.

“Given that it’s August, I’m not sure that we would’ve seen a lot of the calves already sold. So you’ve a lot of young calves out there too that are in that disaster area,” Anderson said.

Longer-term concerns for the cattle include foot rot from standing in water or muddy fields for long periods and the risk of disease from mosquitoes.

Heavy rains and flooding closed bulk grain terminals along the Texas Gulf Coast owned by major exporters including Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, although the companies say the facilities were not severely damaged.

BNSF Railway and Union Pacific suspended service to the flood-ravaged region, depriving exporters of a fresh supply of grain. The U.S. Coast Guard closed Texas Gulf ports including Houston, Galveston and Corpus Christi.

“With additional flooding likely during the next few days, normal train flows in the area may not resume for an extended period,” BNSF said in a customer service advisory.

Cotton blown away

On cotton farms, more than 300,000 bales have likely been lost, between cotton yet to be harvested and bales sitting on fields awaiting ginning, according to John Robinson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University.

The loss, though a small part of the total U.S. cotton crop of about 20 million bales a year, was devastating for individual farmers.

“The cotton that was where the hurricane hit was affected by the winds, it was blown right off the plant. Some of those fields are obliterated,” Robinson said.

“Some of the cotton will still be on the plant but strung out like someone papered your field with toilet paper,” he said.

South Texas and Coastal Bend cotton farmers were expecting a record crop this year. Thirteen of the counties in the disaster area are major cotton producers.

“The South Texas Cotton and Grain Association has preliminary crop losses projected at US$150 million. That’s just devastating to all of farmers down there,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement.

Monday’s ICE benchmark cotton price spiked 2.5 per cent as a portion of the unharvested crop in Texas was destroyed or damaged by rain and high winds, traders said.

“The co-operative’s growers still have a lot of cotton in the field, maybe like 50 per cent still out there. A lot of that will be lost because of the wind and rain,” said Jimmy Roppolo, general manager of United Agricultural Cooperative in El Campo, Tex.

“It was the best cotton crop we ever raised. We really needed it this year to make up for other years,” Roppolo said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Theopolis Waters and Karl Plume in Chicago and Chris Prentice in New York.

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The storm swung back over the Gulf of Mexico on Monday and was expected to bring another 10 to 15 inches of rain to the Houston area and up to eight inches as far east as New Orleans, the National Weather Service said.

Marathon Petroleum’s Galveston Bay refinery in Texas City, Texas, cut production by half, sources familiar with plant operations said.

Lyondell Basell Industries’ Houston refinery early on Monday also cut output by half to conserve crude supply, other sources said.

Meanwhile the nation’s largest plant, Motiva Enterprises’ 603,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Arthur, Tex. refinery was considering shutting due to high water on the plant grounds and running with essential personnel only, two sources said.

The profit that refiners make per barrel of gasoline jumped as high as 21 per cent in the first trading day following Harvey’s landfall near Corpus Christi, Tex., late on Friday, as fears of short supplies gripped the market.

Gasoline for immediate delivery in the Gulf Coast hit five-year highs, traders said, while U.S. gasoline futures jumped as much as seven per cent to US$1.78 per gallon, the highest since late July 2015.

In total, 2.45 million bpd of U.S. refining capacity was shut due to Harvey, which knocked out four refineries in South Texas before bringing flooding rains to plants near Houston.

Nearly 19 per cent of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut, the U.S. Department of the Interior said on Monday.

The latest refining cutbacks were at Marathon’s 459,000 bpd plant and Lyondell’s 264,000 bpd Houston plant.

Marathon spokeswoman Stefanie Griffiths declined to comment. Lyondell and Motiva did not reply to requests for comment.

Oil prices fell as the refinery closings reduced demand, with U.S. crude futures dropping by more than three per cent on Monday.

Among other Gulf Coast refiners, Exxon Mobil’s 362,300 bpd Beaumont, Tex. refinery has cut production, the company said. It did not provide additional details. Earlier, Exxon halted production at its 560,500 bpd Baytown, Tex. plant.

Valero Energy’s 335,000 bpd Port Arthur refinery is running at or near maximum capacity but contending with flooding in the plant, sources said on Monday. Valero confirmed the plant is running, but has not commented on further.

Total SA’s 225,500 bpd Port Arthur refinery is operating normally, sources said.

In the area where the storm first hit, Citgo Petroleum’s refinery in Corpus Christi is preparing to begin its restart process as early as on Wednesday, sources said. A spokesperson did not reply to requests for comment.

Two other refiners who shut plants in the region, Valero and Flint Hills Resources, did not respond to requests for updates on their operations there.

— Reporting for Reuters by Erwin Seba, Catherine Ngai and Jarrett Renshaw; writing by Gary McWilliams.

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Many of the grass fires grew rapidly on Monday due to dry weather and parched prairie land in the Texas Panhandle, north and western Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Several of the blazes were largely contained on Thursday as hundreds have battled the blazes on the ground and in the air.

Six people have been killed in the fires, including three ranch hands in Texas who died trying to protect cattle from oncoming flames. The fires in Kansas were the largest recorded, at about 631,000 total acres, state officials said.

Many ranchers have not yet been able to return to their land but those who did have seen the loss of herds and destruction of fencing, officials said.

“Unfortunately, it (cattle loss) has been in the thousands, but there is not a specific number on the amount of cattle that have been killed,” Katie Horner, an emergency management spokeswoman in No. 3 cattle state Kansas, said in a social media post.

In Texas, the top U.S. cattle producer, losses were also expected to be large, officials said.

The losses are not having an impact on cattle futures or prices of cattle ready for slaughter. Texas has 12.3 million head of cattle, followed by 6.45 million in Nebraska and 6.4 million in Kansas, according to U.S. cattle inventory data.

Two wildfires that burned through about 164,000 acres in the Texas Panhandle were 100 per cent contained on Thursday, and the largest blaze, the so-called Perryton fire of about 318,000 acres, was 75 per cent contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.

The Perryton fire is the third-largest recorded in Texas, it added.

The National Weather Service canceled a critical fire risk warning for the Texas Panhandle into Oklahoma, Kansas and western Missouri it had issued on Wednesday, saying a weak low pressure front was in the area, bringing moisture to the air.

In Oklahoma, two ranches in Woodward County lost about 200 head of cattle total and a hog farm operation lost several thousand animals in the wildfires, Luke Kanclerz, spokesman for the Oklahoma Forestry Services said. He added the number will climb when damage can assessed in other places.

— Reporting for Reuters by Jon Herskovitz; additional reporting for Reuters by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City and Theopolis Waters in Chicago.

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Under the deal, Friona will acquire Cargill’s cattle feedlots at Bovina and Dalhart, Texas. Cargill said in a statement it will retain ownership of its cattle feedyards at Yuma, Colorado and Leoti, Kansas.

Terms of the pending sale were not disclosed.

The sale of the two feedyards, in the west of Texas’ northern panhandle, will allow the company to redeploy tens of millions of dollars annually into investments to help its protein business, said John Keating, president of Cargill’s Wichita-based beef business.

It is money that otherwise would have been tied up as working capital used to buy and feed cattle, he added.

Cargill has an established relationship with Friona. The company’s existing four feedlots supply Cargill with cattle.

The sale is the latest of a series of changes at the 151-year-old company aimed at paring back parts of its business to bolster margins.

Cargill streamlined its executive team last year to speed up decision-making and has sold off some operations including its U.S. pork unit and U.S. ag retail business.

— Reporting for Reuters by Theopolis Waters and Karl Plume in Chicago.

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ATF Special Agent in Charge Rob Elder said a reward of up to US$50,000 was being offered for the person or persons responsible for starting the blaze at the West Fertilizer Co.

No arrests have been made yet, Elder told reporters, adding that investigators had eliminated accidental and natural causes.

“The only hypothesis that could not be eliminated… and was confirmed by extensive testing… is incendiary,” Elder said. “We have never stopped investigating this fire. It is our highest priority to see that the victims of this tragedy are provided an accurate explanation of what happened that day.”

If a suspect is found, that person could face capital murder charges, which can bring the death penalty.

More than 400 interviews have been conducted and more than US$2 million spent on the probe, which is still active and ongoing, Elder said. The costs included rebuilding to exact specifications portions of the plant to determine what happened.

The fire was reported on the evening of April 17, 2013, and a large explosion ripped through the plant some 22 minutes later, Elder said.

Twelve of the 15 people who died were first responders, Elder said. Many other people were injured and more than 500 homes destroyed.

“Your loss is felt by ATF,” Elder said, addressing members of the victims’ families directly. “It has been a driving factor into why we have gone to the lengths and the details that we have. These individuals were people serving their community in a volunteer capacity.”

The explosion damaged an area measuring roughly the size of 37 city blocks, Elder said, and left a crater 28 metres wide by 3.7 metres deep.

The source of the explosion was ammonium nitrate stored in a wooden container at the plant, investigators said previously.

The ammonium nitrate detonated with the force of approximately 6,800 to 9,000 kg of TNT, according to federal officials.

The blast obliterated an entire neighbourhood — including the high school and a nursing home — on the north side of the town, where the plant had been operating for more than 50 years.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board said in a report this year the explosion likely happened because the owner of the facility kept combustible material near a 30-ton pile of ammonium nitrate. The fertilizer can also be used to make explosives.

The federal investigators also faulted community planning that allowed the town to grow up around the facility, exacerbating the damage.

A Reuters investigation conducted in the weeks after the explosion found that hundreds of schools, 20 hospitals, 13 churches and hundreds of thousands of households were located near ammonium nitrate storage sites across the U.S.

At least seven lawsuits had been filed against Adair Grain Inc., which owned the facility. Plaintiffs claimed negligence by the plant employees and sought millions of dollars in claims.

A partial settlement that included the families of the three killed in the explosion who were not firefighters was reached in October, but the details were not released.

— Suzannah Gonzales is a Reuters correspondent based in Chicago. Additional reporting for Reuters by Jon Herskovitz and Jim Forsyth.

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