GLOCAL WEATHER HIGHLIGHTS

MARCH 2026

UNITED STATES

Hawaii is preparing for a powerful storm this week that is expected to cause intense winds, thunderstorms, and possibly significant flooding across multiple islands. Josh Green, the governor, said on Monday he had issued an emergency proclamation in response to the weather expected to hit his state in the coming days, in order to bring additional resources into affected areas. “It’s going to be kind of a rough and tumble week with the weather,” Green said in a video posted on social media. “Be very safe. Be particularly safe on the roads.” The National Weather Service (NWS) has advised that a “large and powerful kona storm” will deliver heavy rainfall, causing flooding on smaller islands and in urban areas, as well as potentially severe thunderstorms and gusty winds. It will first hit Kauai, Niihau, and Oahu on Tuesday, before expanding to the other islands in the coming days.

Three people have been killed, and three were taken to a hospital after a tornado hit a southern Michigan town on Friday, authorities said. Powerful storms ripped across the state, tearing the roof off a home improvement store, sending parts of a storage building flying, and knocking down trees as warnings were issued across the southern part of the state. The Branch County sheriff’s office said there were 12 reported injuries and three deaths after a tornado appeared to have hit the Union City area, which is about 125 miles (200km) west of Detroit. In St Joseph County, Michigan, next to the Indiana border, the sheriff’s office told residents to “seek shelter immediately” after confirmed reports of a tornado touching down in Union City about 4.40 pm, a severe thunderstorm watch, and possible winds of more than 60mph (96.6km/h). “Citizens should anticipate power outages, closed roadways and/or neighborhoods and cellular/internet interruptions,” the Michigan state police said in a social media post. At her home near Union City, Lisa Nicola can be heard repeatedly yelling out, “Oh my God,” as she films from her back deck a ferocious rotating column of air that appears to be a tornado tearing through a section of buildings across the lake from her.

The record-breaking heatwave scorching the US west this week would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis, a team of scientists has determined. Millions of Americans from the Pacific coast to the Rockies baked under unseasonably warm and even dangerous temperatures this week, with temperatures up to 30F (17 °C) above average for the time of year. The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has made this kind of heatwave four times more likely to occur over the last decade, according to a new rapid analysis released Friday. “These temperatures are completely off the scale for March,” said analysis co-author Ben Clarke, who is an extreme weather and climate change researcher at Imperial College London, in a statement. Even as recently as 2016, the current heatwave would have also been milder, with temperatures about 1.4F (0.8 °C) cooler, says the analysis by World Weather Attribution, an international consortium of climate researchers. “These findings leave no room for doubt. Climate change is pushing weather into extremes that would have been unthinkable in a preindustrial world,” said Friederike Otto, a climate science professor at Imperial College London, who also worked on the study. To carry out their rapid analysis, the scientists examined forecasts for five days, from 18 to 22 March. To quantify the impact of global warming on the week’s extreme temperatures, the researchers analyzed weather and forecast data, and also used climate model simulations to compare how heat events have changed in today’s climate. Fueled by an area of high pressure in the atmosphere, the heat dome has shattered temperature records in 140 cities stretching from California to Missouri, according to the Weather Channel, while leaving California, Nevada, and Arizona under extreme heat warnings on Thursday.

CANARY ISLANDS

The Canary Islands were plagued by adverse weather this week as Storm Regina, named by the Portuguese weather service, barreled through the archipelago. The storm swept eastwards towards Africa on Tuesday and Wednesday after bringing strong gusts of up to 64mph to the island of Lanzarote. Wave heights of 5-6 meters were widely reported, while some peaked above 6 meters along northern coasts in the Canary Island chain. As a result, the area was placed under a yellow warning for rough seas. To add to the chaos, snowfall struck elevations above 1,500 meters in Tenerife, closing multiple mountain roads. The winter of 2025-26 will be remembered as somewhat of a rollercoaster across much of the US, with stark spatial and temporal contrasts. Multiple intrusions of Arctic air engulfed large parts of the country, bringing record snowfall and weeks of sub-zero temperatures to many states, most notably in Rhode Island, which recorded nearly 38in (96cm) in 48 hours in last month’s blizzard.

AFRICA

Late last week, torrential rain in Nairobi, Kenya, led to severe flooding. Heavy thunderstorms on Friday, in combination with poor drainage systems in parts of the city, led to at least eight flooding deaths and two deaths linked to electrocution, while more than 70 vehicles became trapped or stranded. The Kenya Meteorological Department had issued a moderate to heavy rainfall warning for much of the country from Tuesday, 3 March to Monday, 9 March, with the heaviest rainfall expected between Wednesday and Saturday. Areas in Nairobi such as Westlands, Dagoretti, Roysambu, and Embakasi were expected to be hit by some of the heaviest downpours, with daily totals forecast to reach between 30mm and 70mm. In reality, within the space of 24 hours, 6 am on Friday to 6 am on Saturday, 112mm of rain was recorded at a station in Nairobi, considerably more than estimated. For context, the average amount of rainfall recorded by this station for the whole of March is 92.2mm, meaning more than 120% of the average monthly rainfall fell within a single day. Events such as this are rare but not unheard of. In May 2015, 189.1mm was recorded within 24 hours, marking this station’s all-time daily rainfall record. March and April 2018 were also exceptionally wet months for this station, but rainfall was more spread out, rather than concentrated within a few days. However, in April 2018 alone, 495mm of rain was recorded, which is almost five times the monthly average.

EUROPE

On Monday, 9 March, severe thunderstorms affected parts of southern France, with several departments, including Hérault, Var, and the Alpes-Maritimes put under yellow alert for heavy rain. Some of the heaviest rainfall totals came from a cell that passed over the Var department. Examples of high rainfall totals taken from some private weather stations come from the towns of Carqueiranne and Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer, where 104.4mm was recorded in seven and a half hours, and 92.7mm in three hours, respectively. However, as these are private weather stations, they may contain measurement errors. The official Hyères weather station recorded 113.7mm within 24 hours, which makes these values seem credible. This marks a new record for the station, beating the previous daily March record of 84.1mm in 1988. Furthermore, owing to this heavy rain, the Gapeau River in Var burst its banks. The river reached heights of 2.34m, approaching the 2.66m recorded in the November 2011 floods, and as a consequence, flooding continued for the following few days. The US has experienced an active few days of severe convective storms, including heavy rain, tornadoes, and large hail. The state of Illinois may be in line for a new hail size record. On Tuesday, a 6in hailstone was reported by a resident in the city of Kankakee, which if verified would mark a new state record. The previous state record was 4.75in, recorded in the village of Miniooka in June 2015. Other reports have been made of hailstones breaching this diameter, so a new record will probably be made official soon.

Southern Europe has been under a variety of severe weather warnings this week owing to widely unsettled conditions driven by an area of low pressure in the region. This area of low pressure – previously part of the system that brought colder conditions to swathes of the UK earlier this week – moved southwards across Europe through the middle of the week. In doing so, it brought a cold front across western and central parts of Europe, with spells of rain and hill snow across the Alps on Wednesday, followed by snow showers on a brisk north-westerly wind. By Friday morning, accumulations of 20-40cm were expected above 600 meters, and 60-100cm above 1,000 meters in the Swiss Alps. The center of the low-pressure system became established in the Adriatic Sea through Thursday and brought sharp and thundery showers, lashings of rain, sleet and hill snow and strong winds through the day to the surrounding countries. Croatia was one of the more adversely affected countries in the region, where 15-50cm of widespread heavy snowfall in the Gospić region was forecast, alongside the risk of blizzard conditions and snowdrifts in association with strong north-easterly winds. At the time of writing, the strongest gust of nearly 70mph was recorded at Rijeka international airport, probably produced by a cold, dense katabatic wind called the bora wind. While conditions were expected to ease through Friday, weather warnings will remain in place across Croatia and Slovenia owing to the continued influence of the bora winds, with peak gusts of up to 100mph forecast by their respective national weather agencies.

AUSTRALIA

Bundaberg regional council says the full extent of the flood impacts will not be known ‘for probably a week’.  Hundreds of homes and businesses have been inundated by major flooding in the coastal Queensland city of Bundaberg after the Burnett River burst its banks in the wake of a tropical low. The Queensland Premier, David Crisafulli, said on Wednesday morning that 197 people had spent the night at an evacuation center in Bundaberg and about 2,000 homes were without power. “There are people whose homes and businesses have now been impacted for the fourth time in just over 15 years,” he said. Locals were asked to leave immediately on Tuesday afternoon before the community’s two major bridges were closed, leaving about 10,000 people isolated. Helen Blackburn, the mayor of Bundaberg regional council, said on Wednesday morning that “a few hundred homes and properties” had been affected, but the full extent of the flood impacts would not be known “for probably a week”. “In the coming day or two, we will be looking to open the bridges again, and we’ll also be looking to assess each property individually to ensure that those properties are safe to be habitable,” she said. Authorities believed the Burnett River at Bundaberg had peaked at about 7.4 meters, shy of the forecast height of 7.6 meters, Blackburn said.

TROPICAL

Tropical Cyclone Narelle weakened in intensity on Friday evening after barreling into far north Queensland as one of the state’s fiercest cyclones in living memory – downing trees, ripping off roofs and swelling rivers. As of 4 pm local time, the Bureau of Meteorology downgraded Narelle from a category 3 to a category 2 storm, meaning while it was less severe, there were still destructive winds near the center of 100 km/h and wind gusts up to 150 km/h. The system crossed the Cape York peninsula at 7 am on Friday as a “high-end” category 4 storm with sustained winds of 195km/h – just 5 km/h short of being a category 5 storm. After being downgraded, the weather bureau warned the center of the system was still bringing destructive wind gusts of up to 150km, which was forecast to reach Aurukun, in the western part of the Cape, on Friday evening. Damaging gales of up to 120 km/h were likely between Weipa and Cape Keerweer as Narelle moved into the Gulf of Carpentaria on Friday evening, where the system was expected to re-intensify once over the water. A second landfall was expected late on Saturday night or early Sunday near the island of Anindilyakwa on the Top End’s east coast. The storm is then forecast to keep tracking west over already-saturated areas around Katherine, south of Darwin, on Sunday.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila has intensified to a category five storm over the Solomon Sea, days before an expected landfall in Australia. It is forecast to hit along the far north Queensland coast just weeks after the same area was buffeted by Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle, which made landfall on 20 March as a category four system. Maila was located over the Solomon Sea on Wednesday and was expected to make landfall along the Cape York peninsula early next week, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Tropical Cyclone Vaianu, forming in the Pacific, could bring life-threatening winds and heavy rain to New Zealand later this week, forecasters have said, with strong wind watches issued for the entire North Island. The category 3 cyclone is moving south of Fiji towards New Zealand, with winds around the center in excess of 150km/h, Met Service said on Wednesday. While uncertainty remains over the cyclone’s track, Met Service said it was increasingly likely it would reach New Zealand on Sunday, bringing with it “damaging, potentially life-threatening winds”, heavy rains and hazardous coastal conditions. While the heaviest rain is expected across the north and east of the North Island, the storm could affect large parts of New Zealand, the Met Service said. The prime minister, Christopher Luxon, said on Wednesday the cyclone was shaping up to be a “very significant and damaging weather event” and agencies were “on full notice”.