East Africa Floods Persist, Killing at Least 250

Rainfall from October to mid-November was as much as 300% above average across the Horn of Africa, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. The areas hit hardest include parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, where most of the deaths have occurred.

In some areas, the floods came on the heels of a drought that wiped out crops and livestock and left more than 50 million people facing a food shortage.

In October, water temperatures spiked off East Africa, sending the IOD to its third-highest value on record, behind only 1994 and 1997, according to Michael Ventrice, atmospheric scientist at The Weather Company, an IBM Business. That positive IOD leads to more evaporation off the warmer ocean water, which turns into rain.

"This is basically the Indian Ocean's version of El Niño, measuring the difference in water temperatures between the western Indian Ocean near Africa and the eastern Indian Ocean south of Indonesia,"  weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman explained.





https://www.wunderground.com/article/news/news/2019-12-03-africa-flooding-deaths-kenya-somalia-sudan-ethiopia