Temperatures dropped across eastern Europe this week, with temperatures falling to -20C in the Alps and -8.5°C in the Polish city of Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains.
Heavy snow also affected other parts of Poland, with 15–20 cm of snow falling in much of the central part of the country and more than 40 cm in the south towards the mountains.
It happened when an area of low pressure moved over the Balkans and collided with cold Arctic air over Poland. Due to the heavy snowfall, 2,900 firefighter callouts were made and 75,000 homes in Rzeszow were left without power.
To add to the chaos, an Embraer E170STD aircraft, capable of carrying 80 passengers, skidded off the runway onto a grass bank during a flight from Warsaw to Vilnius in Lithuania. Air traffic was delayed for several hours and the return flight did not depart.
There was heavy rainfall in Sri Lanka this week. Sri Lanka typically receives between 250 mm and 300 mm of rainfall in November. More than 250 mm of rain fell in many parts of Sri Lanka in a 24-hour period, causing widespread flooding and more rain is expected in the coming days.
425 houses have been damaged by landslides, 1,800 families are being kept in temporary shelters, 40 people have been killed and 10 injured. Eighteen of the dead were from the hilly tea-growing regions of Badulla and Nuwara Eliya, 300 km east of the capital Colombo.
The unique topography of the area increases rainfall by a process called “geographical aggradation”. As the clouds are forced to climb up the mountains, the air begins to cool. When the air cools enough, it reaches its dew point and condenses. As a result, geographical clouds are formed. Cloud droplets are formed by continuous rising and condensation. Pre-existing rain from higher-level clouds falls through to new, lower-lying clouds and binds together by a process called accretion. This process makes each rain drop larger, so mountainous areas receive more rainfall.
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